


Running with Wolves

by neolith



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1990s, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, M/M, Manipulation, Rated For Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 05:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14993933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neolith/pseuds/neolith
Summary: John Shepard stopped being a Shepard at age five when Jack "The Illusive Man" Harper saved him from ending up in foster care and instead made him a member of Cerberus. John "Harper" gets trained to fight Reapers and to keep it a secret, as anyone not Cerberus is a potential indoctrinated spy. John accepts this reality, just as he accepts Mr Harper as his new father. That is until fellow Cerberus member Toombs attempts to defect and with his dying breath entrusts John with a book of evidence that will change everything that John knows.or1997 AU where Cerberus is secret organisation with an even more secret agenda; relays are essentially Stargates that all lead into this one alternative plane called the Crossroads and John is a teenage boy with the beginnings of a crush and a whole lot of really serious problems.





	1. John Harper

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Azzy for organizing the MEBB again, and thanks to amazing [jubberry](http://jubberry.tumblr.com/) for [the beautiful art!](http://jubberry.tumblr.com/post/175124147440/a-kaidanmshep-military-sci-fi-fic-set-in-the-90s) Be sure to get over there and let jubberry know what you think and check out all the other awesome art.
> 
> Note: Upon posting, this fic still needs to get a proper spell check run and prob some minor edits, so please forgive me for the mess. I made some changes to the story much later in the game than is advisable ahaha, but here it is at least! Enjoy!

  
  
1986

When John was five, his last name was Shepard and he sat in the back seat of his mom’s Volvo 240. While the vehicle was long gone, John would years later still remember the interior of that car, the stains of rain on the windows and his mother’s occasional smile in the rear view mirror. The actual destination was a fact lost to time, but the purpose had been to pick up a puppy that John had begged and begged for them to get.

Just off the highway they went into a tunnel. The other car came out of nowhere, like a bolt from a blue sky. It barely avoided hitting them head on, but their car was forced to swerve into the railing dividing the lanes. The moments that followed were so unbelievably quiet, and when John tried to find his mother in the mirror again, he found it smashed with pieces missing.

The next sound was that of a car door opening, and there were men leaning in, helping him out, but no one touched his mother. John had been certain then, that he’d seen her reaching for him, but father had told him that it was impossible, merely a trick of his concussed mind.

Mother had died instantly.

* * *

 

1997

The Crossroads was the grimmest place John had ever been. Not that he’d been that many places outside of Cerberus facilities, but the outdoors had sunshine and the toy store had rows upon rows with model kits that he had yet to build. The Crossroads only had ruins and Reapers.

A cluster of marauders were at their heels, pushing back their raid on the lair. They always fought in teams, but fighters like John who were still fairly small and quick on their feet were frequently sent off apart from the group, trying to get around to either gather intel or place explosives closer to the reapers. These tasks were considered easier than doing frontal attacks, and a place to learn before facing the enemy heads on. However, when things didn’t go as planned? Well, it was sufficient to say that John by now could appreciate that danger was the greatest teacher of them all. Nothing pushed you to the next level as much as having your life depending on it. Despite the immense boost on the learning curve this caused, John still dreaded those moments. It was a dread that kept him on his toes, both in and out of the Crossroads.

Caution wasn’t enough today. John slipped through cracks like a cockroach, but still one of the reapers caught wind of him. He thought he’d made it unseen until he heard a heavy, harsh breathing sound that was both too deep and too loud to be a mere marauder. He didn’t need the visual cue to realize that he had a brute breathing down his neck. The surge of adrenaline was instant and he thought he could drown in the rapid drumming of his speeding heart.

Off in the main assault squad someone cried out, but John couldn’t quite hear them, too stuck in the space between him and the brute. His only advantage over the creature was his agility which he quickly put to use. Turning around, he set off in an elaborate step sequence that allowed him to dodge the brute’s first swiping attack and slide in under it. As the distance to charge had been too short, John’s slide came to a halt right between the two giant feet, where the brute easily could’ve ended him by just sitting down. To prevent that, John pulled foot long blade from his thigh holster and embedded it deeply into the softer tissue of the underbelly.

The brute roared in agony, and started stomping around. John was saved by a hair’s margin as something gripped his ankle and pulled. What met his gaze as he looked up was not a comrade, but small eyes of piercing light, set in the face of one of the many marauders. John fired three bullets in quick succession into the creature’s neck. It toppled to the side as something tackled it, and this time around it was a human looming over him.

Toombs had nearly a decade on John and was someone who’d been on the team since long before his own debut on the battle scene. As much as they knew how to work along one another, John actually knew very little about the man. Considering it frequently happened that they lost people in the Crossroads or even elsewhere, this sort of emotional distance between squadmates was something that was encouraged. It helped keep priorities during difficult missions, they said. Still, John knew Toombs well enough to know that today something was off. As the man reached out to pull him up, there wasn’t the usual quipped ask for injuries, and Toombs eyes kept flickering around without purpose, as though his mind was elsewhere.

Suddenly more brutes pommeled in, and as John had failed to place the explosives behind the barricades, their odds at success quickly plummeted from tricky to grim. Kai Leng, the cell’s most embellished prodigy and their squad leader, called the retreat, knowing better than to waste resources on an already lost battle. The man hit his panic button, triggering an alarm over at the relay, calling the soldiers home and alerting the base of a mission failed. The blaring noise bounced like balls between the canyons, fading out to nothing not far past the group.

As John fell in line at the back of the squad, he tried to balance the shame of his failure with the relief to be leaving. There would be a lecture waiting once they passed through the relay, but John was too glad to be heading for safety to feel the appropriate apprehension quite yet.

The team ran in pretty much a straight line for the first couple of minutes before Kai signed for them to split off in smaller units. While the brutes had remained around the reaper outpost, there was an impressive tail of marauders following them. Separated they’d be able to shake most of them and only have to fight a smaller number as they regrouped. Thank goodness that most reapers were dumb as rock.

As the team split off in groups of three, John noticed that Toombs was setting off alone. Hadn’t he been at the very flank, John wouldn’t have spotted the man’s escape as he was very discreet about it, disappearing between one moment and the next. A few paces ahead there were two remaining pairs, following the forward path to separate at the next fork. John should follow, those were orders, but Toombs was definitely up to something and John doubted it was anything good. Toombs had never before acted out of line, so this behavior was very alarming.

 _Indoctrinated_ , the ugly word echoed through John’s mind.

He tried to alert his team mates ahead, only to discover they were too far ahead and the marauders close enough that there wasn’t time for any of them to run back and join him anyway. That settled it, and John set off after Toombs alone. It was incredibly dangerous to run off solo in the Crossroads, but if the man was indeed indoctrinated, that was long term the far greater threat. More dangerous than any form or reaper was an enemy hidden within your own ranks. John felt all cold inside at the mere thought of being stabbed in his sleep. There were stories, of entire cells murdered in the night. John had to stop Toombs at any cost.

Toombs had quite a head-start, and for a desperate minute John thought he had lost him. Then he heard a scrape of a boot against gravelly ground. The path set off into unknown territory, an area of the Crossroads that John had never personally been. For a long stretch it seemed devoid of reaper presence, the landscape shaping into a natural labyrinth of rocky pinnacles that reached out of the ground like giant claws. It made it difficult to track Toombs, but also had the benefit of keeping John from being discovered.

John was light on his feet and wearing gear meant for stealth, while Toombs was dressed in clunky armour that once in a while made enough noise to alert John of Toombs position. The route stretched into a half hour long trek. Through the whole ordeal, they didn’t encounter a single reaper, though a harvester crossed the sky above them once. John couldn’t decide whether that contradicted or strengthened his theory of Toombs being indoctrinated. The extended lack of action felt like a string being pulled, that at any moment would painfully snap.

Toombs route ultimately led down into a deep valley and John only realized the man had stopped until he was right on him. They’d ended up in a small clearing between the rocks and infront of them stood the circular shape of a relay. From it’s dull sheen, it appeared to be deactivated. There was a small chance that it was an uncharted relay, left forgotten, but far more likely it was one of the many relays that had been shut down after the other end had fallen into military hands. When Toombs pulled a lever at the bottom of the relay’s frame, stirring it slowly to life, that probability was significant enough for John. There was no lingering _maybe_ regarding whether or not Toombs had turned his allegiance away from them.

John raised his handgun.

“Step away from the Relay,” he ordered, both voice and hands trembling. He’d never turned a weapon on a fellow human before, let alone someone he’d once considered a comrade. He knew it had to be done, but he felt sick to the core. If only Toombs had been far along enough to put a shine in his eyes, but they were painfully brown as they stared back at him in shock. The only shine about him, was the increasing backlight from the relay, emitting more and more light as it was starting up.

“Oh kid,” Toombs let out, the words gasped rather than spoken. “Oh god, you don’t understand what you’re doing.”

John wavered in what little resolve he had, but he kept the gun up. If he would be able to land the shot if he pulled the trigger however was questionable. So severe was the tremor in his grip. He knew in theory, how manipulative indoctrinated individuals could be. They even had training sessions to learn to resist their sweet talk, but it was a whole other thing to stand there in a real life situation, with someone it wasn’t supposed to apply to. Someone who was supposed to be safe from the reapers’ influence.

“You’re indoctrinated,” John said, as though saying it out loud would make it easier to accept. It didn’t. Toombs looked immensely sad at the accusation, and John thought it wasn’t fair that the reapers were this good.

“You don’t have a first idea about indoctrination, John,” Toombs tried, hands up in a placating manner. “Please put your gun down and we can talk.”

John wanted to listen to the man, and it would be so easy to relent and step back. An unexpected sob wrecked through him at the effort of staying strong. Not daring to speak again, he shook his head, stumbling a step back when Toombs tried to reach for the handgun.

“I don’t want to have to do this,” Toombs pleaded with him, but made no further attempt in advancing on him. They stood there at a stalemate for a couple of long minutes where John tried to will his finger to put pressure on the trigger without success. Toombs took advantage of his wavering, reaching for his own gun and John’s body acted on its own.

A sharp pang echoed through the valley. Toombs eyes were blown wide and they both looked down at the man’s abdomen where there was a large and quickly growing wet stain in the fabric of his gear. John dropped his weapon in a moment of pure dread, the reality of the situation catching up with him like a freight train. No, like a car in the wrong lane, running up at him in a tight tunnel.

Toombs groaned in pain as he crumbled to the ground. The man was down, but not out so when he reached a hand inside his jacket, John flew at him to stop him. He managed to get Toombs pinned down underneath him and the man’s wrist in a firm vice. Toombs entire body went lax, the fight seeping out of him faster than the blood pulsing out of the entry wound.

“You don’t know a thing,” Toombs croaked out, tilting his hand so the object between his fingers peaked out above the collar of his jacket. John was entirely dumbfounded to find it was just a book.

“Read and decide for yourself,” Toombs finished. His face was starting to look very ashy, the dirt beneath him going muddy with his blood and John let go of the man, grabbing the book instead. With some last strength, Toombs pushed the book towards John’s chest, just before losing consciousness. In that last moment, John thought he saw a flicker of red in the depths of Toombs’ eyes, but he wasn’t sure anymore. Everything felt vague and unhinged.

Not wanting to sit on a corpse, John rose on shaking legs, and in a moment of hysterics realizing how fucked he was. Stranded, alone in an unknown part of the crossroads, without sufficient supplies or gear and the crossroads slowly closing on him. All he had was his handgun with a half empty chamber, a couple of knives and the damn book. Pocketing the book in the inner pocket of his jacket, John tried to steal himself before approaching Toombs’ body again. There were guns on the man that he wouldn’t be needing anymore, John told himself, trying to ignore the voice that asked if it wasn’t enough that he’d robbed the man of his life already. _Indoctrinated_ , John reminded himself, _Toombs had been indoctrinated_.

The light from the relay was starting to ripple, meaning it was almost completely open. It cast strange shadows from the silhouette of Toombs’ body, the tips of John’s boots going from illuminated to concealed in flickers. If there were enemies on the other side, John probably had seconds to keep them from leaping out.

Suddenly a hand landed on his shoulder. Kai Leng stood behind him, as quiet as a shadow and unreadable behind his every present shades. The relief that followed the adrenaline spike was palpable. Kai rounded him, heading for the relay and using the same lever that Toombs had used to turn it off again. The light went out, and it took John’s eyes a few moments to adapt to the change.

“Did you know?” John asked, figuring it would explain how Kai found them so fast. Kai didn’t answer, not straight away, but crouched down search Toombs body that lay between them. John’s thoughts went straight to the book now in his pocket, mind spinning madly, trying to think of the best course of action to avoid suspicion. Too late did he realize that the moment for honesty had come and gone. As Kai concluded his search and straightened up, keeping the book secret was the only remaining option or John would be labeled indoctrinated too.

“You did good,” were all the words Kai offered, before he proceeded to contact base over their shaky intercom. “Kid got our Judas, but the stolen files weren’t on him. He must’ve left them at the dead drop.”

There was a moment’s pause that filled with the thunderous beat of John’s pulse. Whatever was in the book had to be very important and father’s property. There was a scraping sound on the radio, followed with the voice of Eva Coré, the cell’s second in command.

“Understood. Diaspora protocol five initiated. You got forty minutes,” she spoke in that chill voice of hers. Of all the people in the cell, John had always found her the second most intimidating.

“Forty minutes might be tight,” Kai intervened, and he probably was the only one with lower rank that could with Eva. “Kid is looking a bit shaky.”

“Then you better leg it.”

The connection cut, and any lesser man than Kai would’ve cursed. Kai simply ran, leaving it up to John to keep up. 

\---

 

Stepping through a Relay was like breaking surface when diving, only there was no wetness. It felt like you hit a break between two planes that didn’t flow the same. The crossroads encompassed you a little heavier, a little thicker. It wasn’t as hard to move against as water, but one step in that direction. Coming back into the earth world, John always felt jittery and skittish, despite the relief of finally being safe. Everything just felt a little too light, a little too easy.

Their cell’s relay opened into a large storage room, normally filled with neat rows of equipment. Upon exiting this time, the site that greeted them was eerily empty, only occupied by a couple of guards and Eva who stood there expecting them, arms crossed and face stern. The guards held some strange equipment that John hadn’t seen before. They were both staring resolutely into the relay.

“Clear the way,” Eva ordered, and John like the rest hurried to the sides. Looking over his shoulder, he found that Kai alone had remained in the Crossroads, his figure a rippling image through the surface of the disturbed portal. One of the two guards approached the relay, passing one of two identical pieces of equipment through it. Then both Kai and the guard changed their grip and it became clear what the tools were - battering rams.

The second guard still stood back, but aimed a torch-like light against the relay. The red light caught in the surface, clearly marking a spot at the centre of it. Kai and the guard in front of him both took aim simultaneously and shattered the relay.

John jumped at the loud boom of impact, terrified and confused over what just happened. Kai was no longer visible and the relay had gone dull and lifeless.

 

“Departure in three minutes for anyone not on clean-up,” Eva announced, sending people running. “Clean-up depart in eight!”

When she turned on her heel, she pulled John with her with a firm grip on his shoulder, leading him out towards the road exit. Outside trucks stood lined up and people were running back and forth packing. The only things going back inside were tanks of fuel. John realized in a moment of distress that they were going to burn down the entire compound. His home of the past decade would soon go up in flames. He wanted to question, to ask why, to plead to stay, but Eva’s hand on him kept him silent.

She led him up to a truck in the front, guiding him to the door and helping him climb up. Not that he needed the extra push. It was clear there was a designated spot for him and Eva was tasked with getting him there. Once in the seat, John looked up and instantly stilled in surprise.

“Father,” he breathed out at the man behind the wheel. His father’s identity had been a mystery until the day his mother died. Then Jack Harper had turned up out of nowhere, dressed in a smart suit and piercing eyes, to spare John a life on the streets or in foster care. John missed his mother, what little he could remember of her, but father cared in his own way, even if he wasn’t as warm as Hannah Shepard had been. Father’s love was the tough sort, because you had to be tough in this world they lived in. John could appreciate that, just like he could appreciate father’s many sacrifices in taking him in. Still, the man intimidated him nearly as much as the reapers some days. Getting seated next to him now, in the aftermath of the whole mess in the crossroads, John found himself breaking out in a nervous sweat. The book in his inner pocket felt like a burning brand, marking him a traitor and he braced himself for father to notice. Father always seemed to know everything.

“You’re not in trouble,” father clarified straight off the bat, in a voice that was calm and kind. John knew how quickly that voice could change into something harsh and cold, and only felt mildly reassured, remaining alert in his seat for any indication he needed to apologize and make amends for any and all mistakes.

A giant warm glow erupted outside the truck, accompanied with a dull roar and looking out the window, John could see the compound going up in flames. Against the flames there was a dark silhouette, approaching the truck, something in their hands. The door on John’s side opened again and a box was shoved into his lap. In it he found the one collection of personal possessions he had - a bunch of models he’d made over the years, and he nearly cried in relief at the sight.

Ahead there was a honk and within seconds they started rolling. John tore his gaze from the models to stare transfixed into the wing mirror at the flames that were eating away at his childhood home. As they reached the first fork in the road, the caravan of vehicles split up in different directions. Father’s truck remained on the main road that would lead them towards the city. John had no idea what that meant, if it meant anything.

“Open the glove compartment,” father ordered, not taking his eyes of the road. Without pause, John obeyed and thumbled with the old lock for a bit. Having to reach around the box in his lap made him a bit clumsy, but when he got it open, a folder fell out. Only his reflexes helped him catch a couple of stray documents before they hit the floor.

“Would you like to go to school?” father asked cryptically. John’s heart started hammering away in a hopeless sort of excitement, despite his best attempts to dissuade it with scepticism. He’d always been home schooled, and for good reason. The world was filled with indoctrinated agents, even children, and father had always been adamant about keeping him safe. It was bad enough that mother had died.

“Like a real school?” John asked, despite himself. A real school would mean kids his age, something that had only been a rare, occasional treat so far, whenever there were training camps. His hope was already so impossibly large that he didn’t know how he’d handle the disappointment if this was all a misunderstanding on his part. Father’s lips quirked into a smile though, after a quick glance his way.

“Why don’t you open the folder and look,” father suggested and John did. At the very front lay a small pamphlet with a picture of a yellow and brown school building, titled _Welcome to Grissom High_. Something in John’s stomach was running circles and it was simultaneously the best and worst feeling in the world. He glimpsed through the pamphlet, just enough to verify it indeed detailed a real school, with real classes, with real teachers and pupils. Then he looked beneath the pamphlet, at the myriad of documents that accompanied it. There was a schedule, detailing six classes a day, lists of books to get and the like. It all looked too good to be true.

“I understand you were part in catching Toombs today,” father said. John only nodded in reply even though the reminder sent something cold and ugly seeping through him, only pierced through with a spike of fear. Did father know after all?

“Turning your gun on someone you thought a comrade isn’t easy, but you remembered your training and took down Toombs accordingly,” father said, stearing the truck towards the highway leading in direction of Vancouver. They were still following the other car. “Toombs was a corrupted man, about to expose us all to collaborators of the reapers. You have saved countless of innocents today, John. Remember this day if you ever face indoctrinated agents again.”

It sounded like praise, but John couldn’t muster the usual pride that would overwhelm him at such words from his father.

“Yes, sir,” he muttered, sinking low into his seat to make himself smaller, almost managing to hide behind the box. It was a relief when father switched on the radio, letting the channel host’s chatter fill the cabin instead.

_“What a year it has been! We started of with Dolly the Sheep, and now IBM supercomputer Deep Blue has defeated the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov. The computer beat mankind at his own game! What is next, Terminator?”_

Father laughed as the exaggerated rant trickled off in a series of conspiracy theories, one more ridiculous than the other. While it was clearly meant to entertain, the smugness on father’s face had John believe that whatever humor he found it was something different than intended.

John put the folder into the box, and wrapped his arms tightly across his chest as he tried to drift to sleep. While he kept his eyes closed, the shape of the book against his ribs kept him awake for hours until fatigue finally won out.

\---

 

The journey ended the next day, a couple of hours before the sun set. The low light cast long shadows from the truck over the house that father introduced as theirs and Eva’s new home. It was a suburban villa, nothing grand or exceptional about it save for the fact that John hadn’t lived in a regular home since he was five. There were strangers meeting them at the lawn a few minutes later, helping to unpack a section of what was stowed in the back of the truck. Father handed over the keys to the vehicle, as John was herded inside.

The house was already furnished, and there was a room assigned for him. It’s walls were a worn beige, with rips in the wallpaper, and there was a couple of wardrobes attached to the wall and covered in the same yellowed paper. There was one window, facing the neighbours wall, letting in very limited amounts of light at this hour. For furniture he’d been granted a desk with chair, a chest of drawers painted in green that was flaking off and revealing a mustard yellow layer beneath, and lastly a plain panel bed frame with a thick foam mattress on top. Like the house, nothing was grand, but the interior at least matched what he was used to from the compound.

The door flew open behind him, one of the strange men stumbling in with a couple of boxes that he deposited without care on the desk. It left just enough space for John’s box of models that he set down carefully, not wanting to damage them any further than the hazardous packing had. One more box was delivered before he was left alone. He really didn’t have enough things to fill all the storage space he’d been given. At least one of the drawers he found already filled with linens for the bed, that at the moment wasn’t made. It revealed a tear in the cover of the mattress, just at the foot end. It gave John an idea.

The tear was small, but it didn’t take much effort to widen enough to fit the book through. Even doing that much sent waves of adrenaline through him, all his senses on edge to pick up if anyone was coming any closer to his door. He kept prolonging taking the book out, procrastinating with choosing linen, pulling on covers on both the duvet and pillow before plucking on the tear again. He tensed up, gathering courage and closing his eyes to better hear where people were in the house. There were considerably less walking around compared to earlier, and then for a short while it was silent. John didn’t dare breathe as he reached up towards his chest.

The knock on the door nearly caused him to jump out of his skin.

“Come out when you’re done and help unpack the office,” Eva informed. “And leave your weapons to the men at the door!”

John had no idea when she’d arrived, but for the duration of their stay here, she’d figure as his stepmother. John was immensely thankful that he wouldn’t have to be homeschooled anymore in this set up. Faking domesticity with Eva would be bad enough outside of school.

“Coming,” he called, because he knew that _when you’re done_ was more a figure of speech than a literal condition when coming from Eva. He had seconds to get out there rather than minutes. It was a risk to leave the book in the pocket, but for the time being he had no choice. With brisk movements he switched out of his gear, stiff muscles aching from having been confined in it for well over a day, and hopped into the first outfit at the top of his box of clothing. It was pretty much all t-shirts and plain jeans anyway.

The crossroads gear, sans holsters with weapons, he balled together to conceal any potentially give-away shape of the book, and stuffed it at the back of the closet for now. At second thought, he took the box with clothes and upended it on top, concealing the leather outfit entirely. He closed the closet, grabbed his weapons and tried pushing the book out of mind for now.

It was a good hour he finally had the chance to complete his plan. All the strange men were gone, and father had been picked up by the local cell leader to go inspect something. Only Eva was still there and thus he felt marginally bolder as he tried again to extract the book. He sat on the bed, with the jacket in his lap, listening intently as he slowly pulled the book out, ready to shove it straight back in at the slightest hint of footfall. He got the book entirely out and quickly shoved it inside the mattress. On the way in it caught, and he nearly whimpered with frustration before he got the situation under control.

Relaxing, he dropped the mattress back in place and breathed out. The calm lasted a second before he realized the mattress cover was sagging between the planks, nearly dropping the book. The tear was too hide to hold the book in place. Panicking anew, he flipped the mattress around so the foot end faced the wall, and while it better concealed the dipping weight of the book, the risk of the book falling out remained.

As nervous tick, John started fiddling with his fingers, finding a tear in his jeans. I gave him another idea. He just had to summon the courage to go for it.

Eva sat in the kitchen, smoking - one of few habits she shared with father. In front of her she had her Gateway Solo - a computer everyone bar father was strictly prohibited from touching. She sat strategically angled, so John couldn’t see the screen from the doorway, but she’d still tensed up minutely as he appeared.

“I need thread,” John said, plucking at the tear in his jeans to give reason for the request. Not that Eva looked up. “And needle.”

John waited, perhaps only minutes but it felt like eons and he barely dared breathe, as he tried to anticipate the woman’s reaction. What he ultimately got was a sigh, as she reached for the cordless phone positioned on the counter. Whatever number she tapped in, she knew by heart, but there was a brief pause in the middle, as though she had to stop and think before finishing. The other end picked up after just a few rings.

“Kid needs thread and needle,” Eva echoes John’s request into the receiver. There was a pause, and John could barely pick up a hint of the words that were spoken at the other end. As Eva finally looked over at him, he enthusiastically gestured at the rip in his pants.

“It’s jeans,” Eva clarified. “Regular blue ones. Whatever you have will do.”

Eva hung up, setting the phone down and flicking off ash from her cigarette into the ashtray. After drawing another puff, she nodded her head in direction of the door. Missive clear, John hurried out a quick thanks and ran out to the doorstep to wait.

John was surprised when a girl his own age approached him. She had long, dark hair that looked well kept, neatly framing her face even though she was otherwise dressed in pajamas and a robe wrapped around her. The hour was late, and John had the decency to feel bad for a moment. The girl’s eyes truly looked judging as she sidled up to him, hand holding out the requested needle and thread.

“You’re the new kid?” she asked, taking his measure with a rake of her eyes. John felt quite intimidated, and tried to decide whether or not her greeting was a veiled admission that she too was Cerberus.

“Miranda Lawson,” she introduced herself as John accepted the promised items - a spool of bright blue thread, with a needle stuck in it. _Lawson_ \- the family name was very familiar from conversations John had overheard his father have. Henry Lawson was a key figure in Cerberus’ sustainability. Whenever words like _research_ or _development_ cropped up in talks, the name Lawson always soon followed. There was no saying how or even if Miranda was related to Henry, but she was the closest to a face on the man John had gotten thus far, and thus he ended up staring a bit. Miranda wasn’t impressed.

“Next time you have a sewing project, try to make it before ten,” she concluded and turned on her heal, not giving John the opportunity to get a single word in. He ended up following her with his gaze, all the way back to the neighbouring house where she snuck in as quietly as anyone who’d had to practice stealth in the crossroads.

John only shook out of his reveries as the door gently clicked shut, and hurried to run in and fix the mattress. By the time he was done, he was so tired he utterly forgot about also fixing his jeans.

* * *

 

1987

John was five, going on six and he missed his mom. The only thing he’d had left from her was her name and now father had taken that too. Next to his _John_ stood an unfamiliar _Harper_ , an early birthday gift from father. He didn’t want it, but it was necessary.

“If we don’t, then social services will come and take you and we don’t want that,” father had explained and John and shut up about it. Father’s friend Eva had explained enough of the social services for John to understand the severity of that threat. And she would know, having worked for the state before, in the military branch. They were all indoctrinated and evil.

Knowing he was safe did not mitigate the loneliness however, didn’t comfort him as he was crying himself to sleep at night, cramped into the corner of his bed because the walls around him was the closest he got to an embrace these days. This desperation was what ultimately boosted enough courage in him to make a request.

“Can I have a dog for my birthday?” he asked father, one night at dinner, a couple of weeks before his sixth birthday. The answer was brief and firm.

“No. Don’t you remember what happened when you asked your mother for a dog?”

Father hadn’t even looked up, hadn’t needed to. The words were enough to send a bolt of guilt through him, efficiently silencing him forever on the matter. Father didn’t bring it up again either. He had more important things to concern himself with, John knew, which was why he was surprised when father took him out some days later, just the two of them. It was a rare treat, to have father’s attention for well over an hour, even if they didn’t speak a word at first.

They went to a toy store, and inside the door, father finally explained the purpose of the trip.

“Pick one toy, any one toy you want,” he said. John took his time, and marvelled in the fact that father didn’t stress him. He went to the plush toy section and nearly picked out a plush puppy, but decided against it. It wasn’t a real dog. He went around the corner and looked at laser tag toys, but they were too much like training. So were the action figures, and the video games demanded use of the tv that he was only allowed for an hour a week.

Then he came towards a section in the back with tall stacks of model car kits. He hadn’t known there were so many different cars before that day and mesmerized he’d swept his eyes over the vast rows of boxes. He hadn’t expected to go for one of kits, but then his eyes had landed at a picture of a car he recognized. The color was wrong, but the shape was just right, just like mother’s car. Without a word, John plucked the Volvo 240 sedan model kit off the shelf. It was the first time since the accident that father was tender with him, wrapping a loose hand around his shoulder as he led him to the counter, and added some brushes, paint and glue into the purchase even if the offer had only been for one item. When the lady at the register protested that toy was perhaps not suitable for a boy John’s age, father had insisted that that was up for John to decide.

John smiled the entire way home, clutching the box to his chest.

* * *

 

 

1997

Growing up, David Anderson had, like any other kid in a decent place, imagined many big thing for himself as an adult. Sitting on the floor in a living room, back rested against the couch and lesson plans spread out on the floor before him had never been any of those things. The confident yet kind woman beside him was less in contrast with his childhood dreams, even if dating a teacher had not sounded appealing back when he was a student himself. When he’d daydreamed of mixing work with pleasure, he had pictured something more Bond-esque than simply working together in one place rather than separately or at the office at school.

It was comfortable though, a form of comfort he couldn’t have appreciated with the years and experiences he had as an adult. They were both focused on their documents, but Kahlee sat angled so her toes touched his thigh, absentmindedly caressing his leg with them and occasionally Anderson would reach over and give her leg a gentle rub.

Kahlee sighed heavily enough to bring David’s attention away from his papers, and when he glanced up their eyes met.

“What?” he asked, noting that Kahlee held some student’s math assignment in her hand. Her blond hair that had been put up in a sloppy ponytail had started coming loose, falling into her face. It was a disheveled sort of look that under other circumstances could’ve looked enticing, but now rather looked sweet in a domestic way.

“I have this student that’s been out of school for half a year,” she said. “Just spent her summer catching up and while it’s impressive, it’s not quite up to her usual speed. Then again, I can’t imagine recovering from a lung transplant is all that easy. I didn’t even know you could transplant lungs.”

When David asked who the student was, Kahlee simply angled the paper. At the top _Miranda Lawson_ was written in crips, clean letters. Not a student David had ever had, which probably wasn’t strange as he only taught P.E. classes.

“If she’s returning to class after summer, she’ll surely catch up eventually,” he said in encouragement. Kahlee hummed.

“You also had the new kid, right? The boy that has been homeschooled?” she asked, clarifying the relevance of the question a moment later. Miranda’s father had been involved in the boy’s enrollment in the school, the family old friends of his. David picked up his own set of notes from the principle on the new kid.

“He’s apparently some martial arts prodigy, but the family want him focusing on his studies for a while,” he said, which was a curious fact since the family had allegedly moved here from a small, remote community. Maybe they’d had some previous residence in a city big enough to have clubs, or the trainer was in the family.

“You ever learned any martial arts in the army?” Kahlee asked conversationally, too late realizing her mistake. David had been discharged roughly three years prior, due to mental health reasons. Normally he wasn’t that sensitive about it, but it was only yesterday he’d been through his most recent psychiatric evaluation. He’d passed, but sitting there and getting reminded again of his brief episode of psychosis in Rwanda still stung. He still felt convinced that what he’d seen had been real, the large dislike object lodged in the ground and shimmering at touch had been real to all his senses, even if he’d accepted it as a trick of his mind. After evaluations such as these he always felt down, distrusting of his own senses and mind.

Kahlee set her papers aside and slid up next to him.

“Sorry,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around his torso. Wrapping an arm about her in turn, he closed his eyes and focused on the feel of her in his arms and around him, the warmth of her and the feelings she stirred in him. _That_ was real he told himself. Her he could trust, even if his mind would start slipping again.


	2. Grissom High 97

1997

The summer went by in a breeze of orientation at the new compound, incorporating themselves into the local Cerberus cell and training. The days were busy enough that John forgot about the book, nearly even forgot about Toombs. It was only at night that the memories came out, Toombs last moments haunting him and keeping him awake until the early hours of the morning. John wasn’t a stranger to insomnia, but this was worse than it had been in years and he lost a little weight before school rolled around.

Then it was the anticipation that kept him up. His first day, he’d barely caught a couple of hours and the exhaustion was present in the form of aching joints and slow perception. When the minibus that would take him to school rolled up in front of the house, he didn’t instantly notice all the faces peering through the windows. It was first inside he realized that there were several kids at this cell. When he tried to greet them though, they all turned away without a word, so John sat down and followed suit, spending the ride in complete silence.

After a few minutes, the driver turned on the radio that at first played some song before changing over to a news report. John didn’t pay attention at first, zoning out and perusing all his expectations of schools when a certain segment caught his attention.

“Diana, Princess of Wales has died in a car crash in Paris,” the anchor spoke and while John had no knowledge of any princesses from his sheltered life at the Cerberus compound, the description that followed of a crash in a tunnel, held distressing similarities to mother’s death. The words from the radio blurred as John felt his heart race and his breathing get out of his control. Someone must have noticed, because shortly after the radio cut and a hand landed at the backrest, next to John’s shoulder. When he turned to look, Miranda was there and leaning forward.

“Calm down,” she said. “You’re breathing awfully fast, and we are almost there.”

Once John had managed to take a couple of deeper breaths, the girl continued giving instructions.

“Turn off your pager, if you haven’t. The teachers will confiscate it if it rings in class. Just remember to turn it on during lunch and after your final class.”

As she backed up again, her eyes dropped to his pants, making a displeased face.

“You only own one pair of pants?” she questioned.

When she shot past him, and out of the vehicle, John realized he was wearing the same jeans he had that first night - and the tear was still there. Shit. He hurried to follow suit, to give some sort of excuse, but well out of the car he was overwhelmed with the crowd, jeans issue instantly forgotten. It had been years since he’d seen so many children in one place. And never had he seen children be so loud.

They were _everywhere_ , screaming and throwing things, running back and forth in no particular order. He had thought such a sight would excite him, but walking in between the loud and rambunctious teens he felt nothing short of terrified. He found there was more order on a battlefield than at the lawn in front of Grissom High, and all the erratic movement left him jumpy and on edge.

He hurried to find Miranda which was the closest to a familiar face he had in this place, noticing she’d stopped to talk to some girls her age. Near her stood a pair of twins, and some third bloke was yapping about evil clones. For some reason that attracted Miranda’s ire. In an instant she was there, slapping a book hard down on the boy’s head. John decided to not ask her for guidance after all.

He ended up tailing onto the larger stream of students, milling through the main doors. It was a struggle for John to not panic as the crowd was pressed tighter and tighter together to make it inside. To better deal with the chaos of the morning rush, he kept near the walls, leaving him with one side less to defend against any eventual attack. Most students seemed to ignore him, but a few stared unabashedly as he hurried past. Things started going truly awry when he thought he saw a shine of red in one girl’s eyes. At second glance there was nothing, but early signs of indoctrination were fickle, blink and you’d miss it and now John worried he’d missed important signs in all these students.

He jumped when someone popped open their locker right in his path, and crossed over to the opposite side, into a nook in the wall. The lighting didn’t quite reach the corners and John was distracted - that was the only way he could explain why he hadn’t noticed the man standing there.

The man made himself known with a hand on John’s shoulder, spinning him around. The face that leaned out of the dark looked like Toombs for half a second, before John noticed the scars and mismatched eyes. It was a terrifying face, and John couldn’t determine if this man was any improvement from having a ghost looming over him. John’s heart jumped right up into his throat in fear, at first convinced the man was half reaper already, until he realized the left eye was only pale, not shining.

“You’re new,” the man spoke. Looking away from his inquisitive eyes, John noted the man was wearing some sort of dirty overalls. A washcloth and some tools hung strapped to a belt wrapped around his hips.

John didn’t get the chance to answer before the man reached over and grabbed the paper with his schedule at the top of his pile of books.

“Oh, you need to get moving, boy,” the man spoke, still holding onto him as he steered him around, pushing him forwards through the moving crowd. They moved fast and with some purpose that John wasn’t quite privy too. It felt a bit like being strapped to the front of a train, but with no visible tracks ahead to give any indication of where they were heading. When the man twisted them around, John had to struggle to keep his balance and not drop his things. The one time he failed, the man’s reflexes were quick to grab the flying folder before it hit ground. They reached a dull brown door, same shade as all the other doors they had passed, just as the bell rung. John stood there shell shocked for a moment, trying to catch his breath as a couple of late comers slipped in at his sides. At the front of the classroom stood a blond woman with eyes that held a warmth in them that came in stark contrast to their icy blue color.

“Hello,” she greeted with a smile, turning fully towards him. Inside the classroom students were moving about in their seats, trying to get a glimpse of him and gossiping. John had never been the center of so much attention and he honestly had no clue what to do with it. Hence he just stood frozen on the spot, until he was pushed over the threshold.

John glanced back over his shoulder, like a drowning kid looking towards a sinking boat, but the scarred man only gave him some sort of mock salute and disappeared.

\---

 

Making friends turned out to be a struggle for John. For one, he didn’t know how to approach anyone and secondly everyone seemed to already have their designated click to hang out with. The social structures came off as an impenetrable shield to him, and the fact that Miranda and the other kids gave him the cold shoulder for anything that wasn’t strictly work made him feel lonelier than ever.  

Then came the first gym class.

He was nearly late, not realizing that gym was in a separate building. After some asking around, he learnt he had to cross the parking lot and by the time he made it that far he’d lost precious time he would’ve needed to change into gear. In his rush, he nearly missed the janitor waving to him from where he was standing smoking. What was harder to miss was the young girl with the man. She had shaved head and enough black liner around her eyes to maintain a somewhat feminine look in the midst of her otherwise very boyish style. While her unconventional style was eye-grabbing, it was the terrified glare she cast at him that made him do a double take. There wasn’t time to contemplate her reaction though, and John rushed on.

The gymnasium was large and well lit. In many ways it looked like the training facilities back at the old compound, only the weapons had been replaced by an assortment of balls and sports gear. Even the lineup seemed familiar, the students falling into neat rows as soon as they came into the hall, while the teacher stood straight, hands loosely clasped behind his back and feet shoulder-width apart.

Adapting to the set pattern, John ran for a spot at the back. On his way, he passed a slightly taller boy with dark hair and a warm smile. Their eyes briefly met and the boy’s smile widened. John looked down, unsure what was the proper way to react. The line-up and roll-call was thankfully much easier to navigate than that awkward close call on social interaction.

After a fifteen minute warm-up familiar territory ended entirely. Their teacher, Anderson, informed they were playing volleyball today. John had no idea what the hell volleyball was. When no one else seemed the least bit confused about what they were setting up for, John felt too embarrassed to ask. He could kill a reaper in six ways armed only with a knife, but his training had failed to prepare him for such a menial task as blending in in a sports game. It was a relief to find out some students had to start on the bench, which gave him a few minutes to just observe and get a hang of the basic play and rules, though it wasn’t nearly enough. Andersson, seemed adamant about getting him in there as fast as possible.

At first he avoided the ball, jumping out of its trajectory as though he was scared of it. It worked all of three times, before Andersson took notice. The two people on the bench were sent back into the game as John was called aside.

“Kaidan, could you come over here?”

Kaidan was the teen with the pleasant smile. Up closer, John further noted his eyes had an amber hue that almost glowed in the right light. The glow was golden enough to contrast the red John had learnt to fear in reapers, but it was still unlike any eyes John had ever seen. The easy smile the boy sported as he shuffled over did not match John’s idea of an indoctrinated agent, not from what he’d picked up from stories told in his cell. That said, John remembered his lessons, of how deceptive indoctrination was. He had to be on his guard around this one.

“This is John, new student at our school,” Anderson introduced him to Kaidan who offered a polite greeting in turn. John remained silent, not knowing what to say or how to act.

“Kaidan here will show you some basics, how to serve and pass the ball, to help you feel more comfortable with the game,” Anderson continued, and proceeded to refer to a cover story father had made for John, something about practicing MMA sports in his spare time. A convenient cover to explain bruises, and John’s battle instincts, should he ever fail to rein them in.

Kaidan seemed impressed and John hoped to dear life he wouldn’t be forced to demonstrate. Once Anderson left them to it, Kaidan thankfully went straight to business.

Kaidan brought them to a secluded corner, and asked John to hold the ball while he showed how to position his hands to form a platform. The other teen was patient and calm about it, even as John struggled to pay attention, his mind running a mile a minute as he tried to read Kaidan between the lines, to catch a glimpse of potential reaper influence in there. Kaidan just seemed genuinely nice though, which left John feeling paranoid, despite a chance like this being what he’d longed for all week.

Satisfied with John’s platform, Kaidan spaced them ten feet apart so they could just bump the ball between them. It was an easy task, mindnumblingly easy, if John hadn’t been so distracted. While the ball kept bouncing between them, Kaidan unfortunately noticed.

“Relax, you got this,” the boy tried to encourage, and somehow that infuriated John. The next pass he got, he struck the ball much too hard and it went high over Kaidan’s head only to lodge itself in between the stall bars across the room.

“I guess this is very different from martial arts, huh,” Kaidan said with a laugh, and John felt the heat of embarrassment bloom across his face. School was stupid.

* * *

  
1989

When John was eight, a third of the cell went to Ukraine for six weeks. They’d flown over, the distance between the relays too far to safely travel in the crossroads. Looking out the airplane window, John had been amazed to behold something so vast that wasn’t imminently dangerous. The view during descent had been the most of Ukraine he’d ever seen though, as they had quickly been whisked away to a secluded camp.

Before that day, John hadn’t known just how many children were in Cerberus service, as he was the youngest in his cell. In the camp however, there were at least a hundred. There was sadly no rooms for games, no idle chatter to get to know one another. The training regime had been strict from the moment he stepped off the bus and onto the enclosure, all children instantly herded into lines. They’d been given shirts with numbers so the trainers didn’t have to bother with learning names. The _43_ printed on John’s chest and back was worn, as though it was a commonly exceeded number in training.

Every day had been split into three sections. Fitness in the morning. A quick meal before theory and discipline classes where they were drilled to fear the world, the indoctrinated and taught to never trust outside of Cerberus. Another quick meal and then sparring - when they were already exhausted in both body and mind. It was to prepare them, they said, for tough days in the crossroads. They had to grow strong and fast, because humanity needed them before the reapers got them all. The adults were dying on the battlefield and as the next generation they had to be ready to take over the mantle. John knew this to be true, knew how often the squads came back with their numbers diminished.

Knowing how important the work was wasn’t enough towards the end. John was exhausted, low in spirit and just couldn’t keep up. He missed his mother, missed warm days and playing with pebbles in the sun. The girl in front of him landed a firm sidekick on his shoulder, sending him sprawling across the floor. She looked concerned for a moment - no, terrified. Her short ponytail slapped against her cheek as she quickly looked around before hurrying to pull John back up.

“Get up,” she hissed between her teeth, something pleading and desperate in her voice. “They’ll come to punish you. We have to keep sparring!”

She dragged John to his feet, then instantly let go as soon as he had both soles firmly on the ground. She steeled her eyes, her gaze piercing and intimidating despite her being so slight in body, a full head shorter than John. There was a nervous tick in her stance, the fear still there for some outcome worse than John could anticipate at the time. When they started up again, the girl went easy on him, pulling her punches while putting enough power in there to make it look like she was trying from a distance. It changed when one of the instructors approached them.

“Do not hold back, subject zero,” the instructor spoke, addressing the girl and the steeliness went out of her, eyes blown wide as she charged up for an all out blow, planting a foot at the center of John’s chest and knocked the wind right out of him.

Laying on the floor again, trying to regain his ability to breathe, John looked up at the girl who offered him and apologetic shake of the head as she stepped back behind the instructor.

The instructor did not speak, did not need to as a gaze in the right direction was some preset signal of its own. A pair of assistants walked in through the crowd of kids to drag John out of the room. The other kids slowed or even stilled in shock, until the instructor roared at them in warning. The flurry of motion was the last John saw before the doors closed behind them.

After four hours in the Crossroads, armed only with a pocket knife, John was dragged back into the camp, dropped in front of father who briefly held him while making clear he was disappointed. John did not falter again.

* * *

 

1997

The shuttle was late. In the past month, that had never happened. Looking over at the other kids from the cell, John seemed to be the only one confused about it. Miranda checked her watch a second time before sighing. The others took that as cue to start walking, some of them back to school, some down the road and one kid off towards a third, unknown destination.

“They’ll page us when they’re no longer busy,” Miranda informed and turned towards the library. Alone remained John, utterly torn on what to do as there was no protocol to fall back on. The other Cerberus kids were no help either, making no neat line to fall into as they split off and disappeared into the crowd of students milling out and about.

On some level it occured to John that this was a moment of unprecedented freedom, time unchecked and his to do what he wanted with. His experience however told him it was too good to be true, that not all catches would make themselves known before it was too late to take them into consideration. He’d spent hours contemplating the fact in the crossroads.

A blunt object struck John at the back of his shoulder. He jumped, heart beat rocketing prematurely before he caught sight of the rugby ball bouncing onwards through a dispersing crowd of teens.

“Sorry,” a vaguely familiar voice called out. Kaidan came running across the grass, the apology on his face morphing into an open display of joy as their eyes met. As if forgetting about the stray ball, he came to a stop next to John, smiling widely. It was the kind of smile you soaked in like sunlight, and John couldn’t help return it with a small quirk of the lips of his own, even as he was feeling self conscious about so openly enjoying the other boy’s company. There were Cerberus kids still within sight, kids that i didn’t know Kaidan, that would judge John for letting down his guard.

“Hey,” Kaidan greeted, pausing briefly to catch the ball that some helpful bystander returned to him with a lazy toss. There were cheerful shouts, fruitless attempts at interaction that Kaidan simply brushed off to focus on John. It was clear that he was a popular guy, and John felt uncomfortably aware of all the attention it was bringing down on his own back. He couldn’t confirm for sure that the two of them were subject of any conversation, but all around there were kids looking at them and talking.

“Nice to see you out of class,” Kaidan continued. “The Lawsons haven’t whisked you off today?”

Kaidan said it casually, but John instantly went on the defensive. That sounded far too inquisitive. Stay calm, John recalled from training. Stay calm and stay in control of the situation.

“What makes you say that?” he inquired in turn, but coming off far too stern for the set mood. For some reason, that only made Kaidan laugh, to John’s great consternation. Whether intentional or not, the unexpected response did alleviate the tension, leaving John grumpy rather than paranoid.

“So serious,” Kaidan let out once his laughter calmed. “If looks could kill, I’d be dead now. Relax, buddy! We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

If John were do describe Kaidan with one word - it would be _disarming_. While there were ways he could justify tagging along back to the Alenko home, what it came down to was that when Kaidan extended the invitation, John found himself genuinely wanting to go. Mentally he formulated an excuse for father, that this was a self-appointed intelligence mission or infiltration training, but John knew deep inside it was but a construct. There was a rush of excitement he simply couldn’t deny, which was the real reason he quietly tagged along.

For all that John knew, Kaidan was the very definition of average, normal teen. In ways, Kaidan’s life was what John daydreamed his life would be in a world without reapers - a world where he wasn’t weighed down by duty to keep humanity safe. John craved to know more.

This opportunity of insight did not come for free. Never since this whole school gig started had John been so pressed on delivering on his cover story, being bombarded by curious questions from Kaidan. The boy seemed sensitive to when he tensed up too much, dropping it when John struggled to answer, but Kaidan’s friend and neighbour Ashley wasn’t as lenient, pushing on until Kaidan stopped her with some wordless communication they’d built up between them. Ashley was a good sport and a decent challenge in PE, but when she split off in a different direction, John was relieved.

“She is nice, I swear,” Kaidan said, probably picking up on something in John’s posture. John tried to straighten up again, but too late. Like at the school yard, Kaidan only huffed a laugh.

“She’s tough, but well and truly nice once you get to know her.”

They fell into a companionable silence the rest of the way.

John didn’t realize he’d had expectations on what the Alenko home would look like until they stood just outside. Whatever he had pictured in his mind was something far more exotic than the two story house in front of him, not looking all that different from the homes in the suburb where his new local cell was situated. The only notable difference was the structured clutter that was missing on the Cerberus-owned lawns. Here were bikes, gardening tools, some sports equipment among other things. It appeared as most things were put in a designated spot, neat and orderly, but there were just so many things. It was clear that the front yard was a space to live in and not just an area to cross to get inside. It was a grounding sight, a stark reminder what different worlds the two of them lived in.

Unlike John, Kaidan had his own keys for the door - another freedom that set the two of them apart. Kaidan was surprisingly cautious as he cracked the door open, calling inside for some _Mako_. John didn’t realize the name didn’t belong to a person until he heard the pitter patter of paws on tiles.

John was prepared for many things in life, but not the appearance of a dog.

Mako was a three-year-old golden retriever, with an abundance of energy and great curiosity for new people. Kaidan tried to reign her in as she came dashing towards the door, but being fast and lithe, the dog managed to bound out in the space between Kaidan’s hip and the door frame. She jumped straight at John who in shock went down on the grass like a log. He’d trained to take hits far heavier than this, but he hadn’t trained for guarding against the wag of that tail and the excited licks all over his face.

“John! Are you okay?” Kaidan asked, worry in his voice. John couldn’t see him, the world was all blurry and he felt himself shaking as he was hugging Mako to him. Was he crying? Why was he crying?

“It’s a dog,” John said out loud, answering his own questions rather than Kaidan’s. He let out a laugh that tumbled disgracefully on a sob. “It’s a real, living dog.”

“You sure you’re not hurt anywhere?” Kaidan continued to fuss, but John’s attention was all on Mako who was all over him, making a slobbering mess of his tears as she licked them away. It was equal measures glorious and embarrassing.

With some time and effort, they managed to get John into a sitting position. With the humans calming down, Mako also relaxed and dropped her head onto John’s lap. She looked up with big, dark eyes that exceeded any dreams John had ever had about dogs. He remembered sitting in a Volvo 240 with his mom - not the crash, but the good bits - the excited discussion about what to name the puppy. The disbelief that he could be so lucky.

John dug his nails into the palm of his hand to not start crying all over again.

Kaidan crouched down next to him and ruffled Mako’s furr. The wag of the tail sped up a bit at the added attention. They were both silent for a while, soaking in the moment and giving John an extra few moments to reign in the emotions that were storming just under the surface.

“You actually have a soft side,” Kaidan ultimately spoke, his tone lacking the accusation that the words indicated. There was humor in the glint of his eye, and John found he didn’t know what would be the proper way to respond. He waited for the other boy to continue. “And all it took was a dog to bring it out. I thought I’d have to work more to break through that sullen facade you got going.”

John couldn’t help it. His instant reaction was to pout and glare.

“I’m not sullen,” he said, in complete contradiction to his reaction. Kaidan, true to self, burst out in laughter. John hadn’t noticed until now, but it was clear they had some sort of jargong going where Kaidan would laugh and John would glare. It was oddly comforting.

Then Kaidan roped Mako into getting John smiling again. It was a battle lost for John within seconds and he couldn’t turn the smile off until two hours later when the pager pinged.

\---

While the other children were dropped off in their usual places, John was taken directly to the compound. It was just down the block from the home he shared with Father and Ms Coré, a windowless building disguised as a warehouse, registered on some fake logistics company. Above ground were offices, inconspicuous things that could be explained away in case of an inspection, and beneath lay the relay, hidden with all their gear below ground.

If it were a mission, John would be lead straight down into the basement locker rooms, so he instantly went on alert when the driver instead pushed him into what looked like a conference room. The room had a glass wall facing the hall, and across it were large, luxurious offices. In one of them stood Father together with Mr Lawson, discussing something with a grave face.

As John was pushed into a seat, father looked up, pinning him with an unreadable look, before returning attention to other Cerberus leader.

A piece of paper was pushed beneath John’s nose. It was the usual charts, that Eva normally would go through with him. Who had he spoken to, anything conspicuous to report from school. Normally John’s paperwork would end up fairly blank, being as isolated as he was, so he hesitated a bit before he penned Kaidan’s name into the chart. The driver seemed to be waiting for just that, reclaiming the papers and adding Kaidan’s address to it. Lastly he demanded John’s pager and stepped out.

Father made John wait for some additional twenty minutes, before wrapping up and coming over. When he stepped into the conference room, a couple of guards stepped in with him. John noted that they were both armed and unfamiliar to him.

“How was school?” father asked, voice missing the tone of caring by a hair’s width. John straightened in his chair and looked down while participating in the pleasantries as was expected of him. Father seemed to be searching for something between the lines, but John couldn’t know what, and it worried him. The guards stood stoically by the door, monitoring the exchange as though it was an interrogation. Perhaps it was.

“We’ve been very busy, both of us, since we arrived,” father changed the tune, and for this sat down opposite of John. As much as father seemed to relax into it, the tension in the room was potent. John’s hands were beginning to feel clammy. “We haven’t had time to talk about Toombs.”

John’s thoughts went straight to the book hidden beneath his matress. Had they found it?

“Did you perhaps search his body, before Kai arrived?” father asked. His gaze was pinning John in place, eyes sharp as a hawke. There was a wall clock filling the empty spaces with hollow ticks, and they seemed to distort and grow further apart as John tried to calm himself. He couldn’t even imagine what punishment father would find apt enough if he learned that John had kept the book from him.

“I took his weapons,” John gave the part of the truth he felt was safe. Half a lie was more solid than complete deception, but it all hinged on the chance that the book was still undiscovered. John resisted the urge to fidget. “For the return journey.”

Father waited him out, a tactic he’d used before when John had tried to lie, but those had been small things. Exceeding his weekly TV allowance by fifteen minutes had warranted an hour without gear in the crossroads. What would withholding important items connected to an indoctrinated defector call for?

John didn’t crack, and father seemed to finally move on. The man turned over his shoulder and did a come hither-type wave of the hand to some person just out of sight in the hall. Kai stepped inside, carrying maps. When placed on the table, John instantly recognized them as maps of the crossroads. He could spot the familiar shapes of their old relay, far away from a symbol circled in green. Their current relay, John realized. The relay symbol was peppered across the map, a bunch of them crossed out and a few in red. Cross-referencing with what he knew from the area surrounding their old relay, he concluded the red signified a relay fallen into enemy hands. Their old relay was crossed out - destroyed. There were at least ten destroyed relays, far exceeding the number marked in red.

“Toombs' dead drop proved to be empty, so we need to retrace his steps,” father spoke, and it took John conscious effort to refrain from letting out a sigh of relief. Kai must’ve noticed something, because he glanced up briefly, but made no comment.

The book was still missing, to their knowledge. They hadn’t found it. John was safe, for now.

“It’s a five hour hike, at my pace,” Kai explained, tracing a path between their current relay all the way to the spot where John had finally caught up with Toombs and killed him. There was a relay marked red there, even though John knew for a fact it was deactivated. Perhaps all the red ones were, explaining why there weren’t more husks around. Maybe that was why the reapers had claimed Toombs, because their supply was limited to Cerberus soldiers now.

“I can keep up,” John vowed, now that he understood what this meeting was about. He of course knew they wouldn’t find anything, but if he could get to go back home to change clothes or something, he could sneak the book with him and drop it to be found somewhere along Toombs’ final path. It was the best opportunity he was going to get to redeem himself.  

“You can’t identify the route on the map?” father asked, and John didn’t need to lie to assure he got to come along here. He could roughly identify the area they had moved through, but it was poorly charted on the map before them and John was honestly unsure he’d be able to recall all the twists and turns even on location.

His response seemed to settle something. The driver was ordered back in, with instructions to bring John back at 4.30 AM. Kai who had the most experience in crossing long distances in the Crossroads was set as team leader over a ten men sized escort, and provisions were discussed. John realized with a start that he’d miss school, and that this actually mattered to him. He didn’t protest or say anything, but he thought about Kaidan’s casual “see you tomorrow” and sagged into a state of gloom as the driver gently pushed him towards the door.

\---

John was keeping up, but it was all through sheer force of will. No part of the crossroads had smooth roads, even the well-trodden paths rough more than not. The few hours of rest that John had managed to get were grossly insufficient and the energy from his steady breakfast was starting to run out.

At the front, Kai gave no indication of slowing down and for good reason. They all watched the skies, any time they could spare the attention from the uneven terrain. A harvester sighted at the horizon would be a serious warning for large swarms of reapers, and then there was the risk of the arms of the crossroads closing. They needed to notice that early if they were to have _any_ chance of making it back before the purge. Once the arms started to close, it would be hours before the process completed, but being so far out they’d need every minute to make the desperate dash back to safety. John had no idea still how Kai had survived the purge, but he knew it was a near impossible feat.  

They rounded a small hill, and Kai pointed out familiar, clawlike shapes in the distance.

“We’re getting close,” he spoke for everyone to hear, and John was pushed to the front. Soon he’d have to take over leading their steps, and he’d have to figure out a way to separate himself long enough to plant the book unseen. It was a heavy weight in the inner chest pocket of his leather gear - ironically the same spot as where Toombs had kept it on his body.

The deactivated relay came into sight, and with it the darkened spot of Toombs blood. The man’s corpse however was gone. John assumed it was the reapers, but Kai briefly investigated the area for traces of anything else. There was something like footprints in the grain and dust covering the clearing, but the shapes were too smudged to tell much. Only thing clear was that they were too large to be human, which seemed to be enough for Kai. He still asked one of the men to photograph a couple of the prints.

“Show us the way,” Kai ordered, everyone looking expectantly at John. At least this first stretch he was fairly certain he’d get right. The rest? He’d wing it whatever way he had to in order to accomplish his goal. Fortunately for him, the terrain aided him well. Because of all the pinnacles, twists and turns in the path, there were never more than three or four other Cerberus soldiers within sight, even when they did what they could to keep close. On the downside, this resulted in Kai asking them to not wander off from the group unless ordered to.

John didn’t even need to fake being unsure which exact path he and Toombs had walked. That the ground between the pinnacles had been disturbed since their passing was just fortunate, a welcome blessing that made it inconspicuous to suggest they spread out over multiple paths. At first, Kai reigned the group in tight, but with time allowed them to flutter out a bit wider.

John accepted that this was as good as it was going to get. While he could hear his comrades’ movements in the vicinity, he had moments here and there, long enough to drop the book and dust it over enough for it to be plausible it’d been there since summer. John chanced he’d reached a third such moment when he stopped to act. Hearing his pulse like a drum in his ears, he reached a hand inside his jacket and clasped it around the worn cover, feeling ridges at the book’s cracked spine. He kept his attention at the surrounding, looking about between the pinnacles for anyone who might come close, covering his blind spots with his hearing as much as he could. It wasn’t until the book was on the ground that he finally looked at it.

Despite having had the book in his possession for all this time, John had never dared look inside, fearing the repercussions of such a crime. Perhaps that had been a mistake.

The spread that was staring up him featured his own picture, an old one he couldn’t even remember when it was taken. It must be from after he moved in with Cerberus, judging by the buzz cut he’d sported the first few years. Curiously the photo and the accompanying text was all printed in sideways, as though made to fit into a folder rather than make a full spread in a book. There was a whole bunch of information, and a large stamp spelling out “IMMUNE” across the side, spilling out over his photo and into the margins. John didn’t dare pick it up, deadly aware of any sounds around him, yet unable to look away. His eyes dashed across the neat printed rows of text, as fast as he could. They caught on one word - cloning. It was at the very end of bottom half of the page.

John crouched down, just low enough to be able to flick the page over. There were more pictures, but these made him recoil. A couple of them were unidentifiable blobs, but a couple were developed enough for human features to be recognizable. Fetuses at various stages, all more or less deformed. John flicked another page to get past the sight, but instead came across another picture. This one looked like it had reached some state of infancy. _“Trial run 43”_ the notes informed, the word _clone_ rearing its ugly head again to remind John of the origin of the dead baby on the slab.

There was a scrape of a boot too close for comfort and instinctively John reached down and picked the book up again. A voice kept yelling at him in his head, frantic screaming at him _“what are you doing? Put it back!”._ Like the first time around, it was an action too soon too late to undo. A soldier stepped up behind him, just as he zipped up the pocket again.

“Find anything?” the woman asked. John kept his position, knees bent, racking his brain for a good cover. With a boot near the disturbed patch in the dirt, it felt like a natural thing to blame.

“Just a pebble in my shoe,” John lied, trying to sound casual even as he was struggling to not breathe faster. His heart he couldn’t control, and it was hammering away in his chest. Making sure to sweep his foot over the spot where the book had been, John slowly stood up straight again, turning to face the fellow Cerberus soldier.  

She wore glasses, similar to Kai Leng’s, and maybe that was what made her face come off as so unemotive. Or maybe it was the stark contrast to the inner turmoil that John suffered that made her appear blank. She wasn’t anyone that John knew from before, but rather a member of the local cell. There seemed to be a lot more of them around John lately.

“We spotted a harvester just now, so keep up the pace.”

When she turned away, John allowed himself a few seconds to breathe freely, retaking control over the inhale and exhale just shy of full hyperventilating, and just in time before crossing paths with Kai again. The man swept a look over him, but with eyes shielded behind the ever present glasses, John couldn’t tell if the man even acknowledged his presence.

The fruitless search ran without greater hitch for another half hour, the fatigue making itself known despite the energy bars they’d consumed on the go. Then they ran into a barrage of husks. Ever since the confrontation with Toombs, this was the first time John came face to face with any of the humanlike reapers. While before they’d seemed alien enough for John to emotionally distance himself, it was like suddenly the whole hoard wore Toombs pleading face as they charged. Husks were normally the easiest to defeat, but John found himself dangerously frozen in place. A rough shove brought him out of it, but not fast enough to get him out of being swarmed. The lithe creatures were climbing all over him, and he felt something rip over his hairline. Blood trickled out of the fresh wound, feeling hot against his skin.

He managed to shoot a couple of the husks, but as the remaining three started climbing him, he couldn’t take the weight anymore and fell - a failing that would’ve proved fatal if he’d been alone. Thankfully someone on the team cleared the mess on top of him, pulling him up. John got to remain standing for just long enough to see Kai strap explosives to an especially tall pinnacle. They had seconds to take cover, then debris rained down around them. It was mostly dust, the larger pieces having crumbled into the canyon and blocking off the reapers.

“There’s no point in continuing,” Kai declared. It was husks now, but they all knew that there was great risk of the fight attracting bigger prey that they were neither equipped nor rested enough to handle. A strategic retreat was truly the only option. Sadly it meant there would potentially be a second run at a later date, but starting to feel faint from the head wound, John couldn’t care. His most immediate concern was staying conscious until he made it back home and to his room.

They had a medic with them, thankfully someone John knew from the previous compound, who quickly dressed the wound as John squished his bottle to force water into his mouth without tilting his head. Someone commented that he was looking ashy, and it vaguely worried John that he couldn’t tell if they were standing close or not. He focused on his breathing, to try to ground himself in his body again and it seemed to help somewhat.

“Be ready to carry him if he can’t keep up,” Kai ordered, just before they started moving again. It never became necessary, but by the time John was back in bed, the book tucked safely back in its hiding spot, it felt like the entire room was spinning around him. Needless to say - he missed the rest of the school week.

\---

John was lying in bed, feeling the slight incline in the mattress caused by the hidden book like a mountain next to his head. On the desk lay a new building kit that had been brought around for him, some stranger delivering it on father’s behalf, even though John could tell his father had been around. The stink of tobacco wasn’t as permeated with menthol as it was when only Eva was there. John even thought he could recognise the smell of father’s particular brand.

The scent still lingered, but old, stuck in the walls rather than hanging in the air. Furthermore it had been silent for half an hour already. If anyone was in the house now, they were working very quietly. Hopefully, John was for the first time since returning from the crossroads entirely alone. With none of the adults ever telling him anything of their coming and going, John could only trust his senses on this. He decided to test the waters.

Rolling slowly out of bed, he paused both to regain his bearings and to listen for any reaction to his sudden movement. Nothing but dead silence. He turned slightly towards the hidden book, stopping himself halfway out of fear and moving over to the desk instead. The surface was already littered with all he could need for building - various tools, glue, paint and the box he’d clumsily ripped open the day before.

Once seated, he pulled out the content, at first super careful, simultaneously listening intently for any sound around the house. Not picking up anything, he tried upending the box entirely on the desk, lifting it high so the content would make the maximum amount of noise possible. The content being nothing but light pieces of plastic, the sound wasn’t much but in the tense silence every click against wood seemed to leave echoes. From the rest of the house however - nothing. John gave it a full minute, before trying something more. Sweeping his hand across the tabletop, he pushed a handful of paint cans off the edge, sending them across the floor in a clutter. The tiny tins against hardwood were plenty loud, but once they stopped rolling, there was once again complete and utter silence. It seemed as coast clear as it was going to get, and he finally dared run a quick sweep around the house, finding it indeed empty. That done, there were no more precautions left to procrastinate with.

John returned to the room and brought out the book.

He remained on the bed as he brought it into his hands, facing the corner and the reopened tear within arm’s reach. Adrenaline was coursing through him as rapidly as though he were mid-battle, his ears trained on the door behind him while his eyes took in the book in a way it never had before. The hardcover was worn, beaten up and frequently bent so bad it was almost soft. What had at first glance looked like an unlabeled cover proved at closer inspection to be a reused cover from John Grisham book. The contents consisted of papers sown together and attached to the front and back board with duct tape. As John started flipping through the pages, it was clear that all of the book was a bit of a scrambled mess, a mix of handwritten notes and copied pages. Some of them were formatted into proper spreads, but most of the printed papers were awkwardly sown in sideways, and John had to hold the book like a flip-pad to read.

It started out with lists of names, locations and numbers with no context, so John quickly skipped past those, not wanting to waste time on something he couldn’t figure out anyway. Next came some scientific mumbo-jumbo, words that he’d encountered in biology or chemistry class, but had slipped his mind by now, mixed in with things far beyond his level. What he did understand was that it all in one way or another related to indoctrination. Pictures of humans in various stages between just contaminated to fully developed husks made that assessment easy enough. In addition there were clarifying handwritten notes in the margins, possibly Toombs’ doing, explaining certain things in simpler words. John paused especially at one squiggle.

 _Experiments with reaper-tech to counter vulnerability to indoctrination_.

Beneath that particular note was a pair of photos, pre- and post-surgery, of a man with an eye missing, getting an implant that looked like something straight out of a sci-fi flick. John glanced over the printed text, finding the surgery dated to february 1984. Turning the page, there was another date, not a week later. Test-subject diseased. The death certificate was signed by a Dr Lawson - Miranda’s dad.

 _“You don’t know a thing,”_ Toombs words echoed in John’s head, and he felt the blood draining from his face and a sensation like the bed was disappearing underneath him, opening up into some endless vacuum. The text on the pages started dancing before his eyes, his ability to focus slipping under the barrage of all his fears. What did any of this mean?

He skipped a whole chunk of pages, opening on pages on genetic research, and stopped again as he came across the same _IMMUNE-_ stamp he’d found on his own photo. At first there were only adult women, crossed out, marked with the stamp or noted down as carriers.

John felt as though someone had punched him in the guts as he came across a photo of his own mother, labeled a carrier. His vision blurred, before he could properly take her in and he tried to wipe away his tears frantically, wanting to see her properly. He also felt a sense of shame, as he realized he’d almost entirely forgotten her face. It had been ten years since he last saw her, her face then dead and dotted with blood and shards of glass. To see a photo of her alive and slightly smiling, John was bowled over with how fiercely he missed her.

The threat of someone walking in however still remained, and he choked back sobs so that he wouldn’t miss anyone approaching. With regret and just a last glance, he carried on, sticking to Toombs’ notes for guidance on what was important. There was a gene, coded as L1 in the documents and underlined in red pen across multiple pages. The research had found the desired trait rare and recessive - a trait that offered immunity against airborne or contact-less indoctrination.

Wanting to know if the L1 gene featured in his own documents, John flipped through pages quickly, but something else caught his attention on the way. In passing, he spotted a girl that looked just like Miranda. In fact, there were multiple Mirandas. His own file forgotten, John started counting them, finding that in total there were seven of them, that unlike John’s failed clones had all grown at least past toddler age. Upon closer inspection, only one of them was named Miranda. Miranda was the first clone of a girl called Yvonne. According to the file, Yvonne died in combat at age twelve. Everyone but Yvonne was a clone, born only months apart, born by different surrogate mothers. The last detail that John managed to catch was a note listing one of the dead clones as _organ donor_ , when he was abruptly interrupted by the rattle of keys in the front door.

John shoved the book violently back into the mattress cover, stitching the tear together at the middle with one hurried stitch, just enough to keep the fabric from sagging for now, and tossed his covers over his half-assed handywork, before throwing himself into his desk chair. As boots hit the linoleum in the hall, John was cutting building pieces from the plastic frame with trembling hands. When the door behind him squeaked open, he held the small knife a little tighter in his hand, praying desperately in his mind that he wouldn’t have to use it. Whoever was behind him paused momentarily before approaching him and placing a hand on the backrest, frightfully close to John’s neck. John didn’t even realized he’d stopped breathing until one of his tins of paint was set down right next to his hand.

“Don’t throw your gifts on the floor, or you won’t be getting any more of them,” father said, then left. John remained in the chair just breathing for a good ten minutes before he hurried to clean up his mess. Later at night, when he was confident that father and Eva were both asleep, he sowed the mattress back together in the dark, intent on never touching it again.

\---

Monday morning came, and John found himself cleared for school again. He wasn’t let on the shuttle bus, but instead father led him to the garage where there was a car he hadn’t been allowed in before. Father himself got in the driving seat, taking off without a word. John knew better than to question as father displayed all the care and concern that had been absent over the weekend. No one needed to scold John any further about the mess up or about the still missing book. He’d quietly taken it all, accepted getting grounded, because he knew that if they knew the truth there was no way he’d get off this easy.

Sitting in the soft seat of father’s car was uncomfortable, his torso and shoulder constantly aching with severe bruising from the fight in the crossroads. In the back lay his backpack that Eva had packed for him, a nervous ten minutes as she went about his room for things he would need. It was only morning, but John felt drained already from just that tension. Thus he managed to zone out from the exhaustion, until the car rolled past the drop off zone, driving around to the back where there was a parking lot. John looked at father, trying to read a reason for this in the man’s face but there was a pleasant smile plastered on, masking anything at all telling.

They were fairly early, over twenty minutes before classes started, but this side of the school never saw much activity besides the delinquents looking to do whatever they did away from adult supervision. There was a small group of teens using the open area to practice tricks with their rollerblades, but otherwise the space look pretty dead.

Stepping out of the car, John caught sight of the janitor holding a half-smoked cigarette. The man raised a hand in some half assed greeting, and another face plopped around the corner briefly. It was the girl with the buzzcut and heavy make-up that was always glaring at him. Instead of narrowing with a frown, her eyes went round with shock before disappearing. A moment later John felt the weight of his backpack being disposed on his shoulder. He quickly threaded his arms through the straps before father started leading him towards the school’s back entrance. In the moment he’d looked back, the janitor had also disappeared.

They saw the principle, and father gave some heartfelt lie about John having fallen over with the bike on the way home from practice. They agreed that John wasn’t fit for PE just yet, but that he’d try to participate a little bit on Thursday. That wasn’t near enough time for the bruises to fade, John thought, but he hadn’t disclosed to father how bad they were. At the time he’d been more concerned about having to remove his gear in front of the doctor and thus risking to reveal the shape of the book in his pocket. Just another instance of Captain Hindsight coming to punch him in the face.

By the time they left the office, there were barely five minutes left to make it to class. John was feeling stressed, considering his locker was at the opposite end of the building and then he had to make a couple of corridors over to his biology class. With his mind otherwise occupied, he didn’t see Kaidan until the other boy called out his name. Unfortunately he reacted before he could stop himself, and father who was still next to him noticed.

“Friend of yours?” father asked, and John tried to shake his head minutely enough that Kaidan wouldn’t see. Kaidan was John’s secret and he wanted to keep him from father, or father would separate them for sure. There was no way for John to prove to Cerberus that the other boy wasn’t indoctrinated after all.

Kaidan called again, and John mentally pleaded that he would stop, not do this now.

Miranda appeared around the corner then, as if summoned by his distress, and strangely carrying his books. At the time, the mystery of how she had gotten into his locker dwarfed next to the urgent need to get away from the situation, so John didn’t question it, just accepted the books and darted down the hall, away from father. Away from Kaidan, who called out one last time, sounding sad. John told himself it didn’t matter, that he didn’t feel bad.

\---

John stood just inside the door, staring at all the boys in the changing room, all comfortable in their various states of undress. Kaidan wasn’t there at the moment, but a bunch of his jock friends were, half of them a year older and with bulk on the large side for teenagers. No one had noticed John yet, the glaze of panic over his eyes or his tense posture as he tried to figure out his options. The boys were too busy changing and goofing around, messing with each other or teasing this one kid about an apparent crush.

There was a the click of a lock and John zoomed in on it instantly, catching sight of a boy vacating the single toilet, absently leaving the door ajar as he was shouting something across the room. John ran for it, shutting himself in before any of the comments could halt him in his path. There were a couple of remarks, muffled through the door, but John ignored them, breathing a sigh of relief.

Removing his shirt, he caught sight of the bruises in the mirror, an abstract patterns all across his torso. In place of his usual gear, he pulled a new, long-sleeved t-shirt out of his gym bag. It was enough to cover the worst. Since this was the final class, John expected he’d evaded the worst. He could stay in gear until he got home and shower there.

Stepping out of the bathroom, he got a good view of Kaidan’s naked back which was all wiry teenage muscles beneath a healthy tan. John didn’t know why it made him so flustered, but he quickly looked away mentally fighting the heat he felt spreading across his face. He rushed to the corner where he usually changed and disposed of his clothes and bag.

“Hey,” Kaidan said, and it struck John that he hadn’t heard the other boy’s voice since Monday. While the other kids milled out, the class about to start, Kaidan came over and reached for John’s hairline. On instinct John jumped back, regretting it instantly when faced with hurt in Kaidan’s eyes. Kaidan’s hand hung awkwardly in the air for a moment, until John shifted and scratched at the scar to busy himself with something.

“It’s healing just fine,” he said, before Kaidan could speak his concern. It wasn’t a lie, but their medic at the compound had explained that despite the tight stitches, there would still be a hairless stripe of scar tissue cutting through his hairline once it healed.

“I just tripped on my bike,” John repeated the lie, mentally begging Kaidan not to push for truths he couldn’t give. “It’s more humiliating than anything.”

Kaidan didn’t look entirely convinced, the frown on his brow still making tiny, unhappy creases, until he noticed something else. Having been denied to touch the cut, Kaidan instead went for the sleeve of the new shirt. John hadn’t prepared any excuse for that, but was thankfully spared further attempts at questions by Andersson who came around to call them out to class.

“Can we hang out after school?” Kaidan asked as they followed their teacher out into the gymnasium. It felt like a stab in the guts to do so, but John pretended not to hear him because he knew he couldn’t say yes like he wanted to.

\---

Maneuvering gym class had been awkward, but successful and John let out the sigh of relief too soon. It happened again, the delayed ride. Miranda waved her pager and set off for the library, the other kids splitting off in various directions and John just stood there awkwardly, trying to decide what to do. The lie he’d pulled with Kaidan was that he had practice right after school today, providing him the excuse not to shower. It wasn’t the usual day for practice according to his cover story, but he pretended he had to make up for time lost to recovery from his concussion. The deception had been desperate and bullshit. Probably anyone within five miles had been able to tell from how John had told it with a foot halfway out the door, but their driver was usually very timely so he’d thought it’d be an easy escape.

Now he stood there alone, looking stupid in his gym gear. Cold wind brushed past his exposed calves, raising the hairs on them. While he was vaguely familiar with the route home by now, the autumn weather would make him sick if he set out still sweaty and only in his shorts. He settled on taking a detour back to the gymnasium, dragging his feet once he was out of sight from the commotion by the front gate, hoping to give his classmates the chance to clear out before he returned.

He nearly walked into a couple of the girls, but got enough warning by their conversation, comparing eyeshadows. Thanks to the products they were passing between them, they didn’t notice as he jumped back behind a corner at the last moment. Then silence fell over the hall and John snuck up to the door to the changing room, feet light and breath held in as though it would give him away to exhale.

John opened but a small crack at first, glancing in and finding it empty. Finally he let the air out and went in, wasting no time to get out of his clothes. He was down to boxers and the t-shirt halfway over his head when the door opened.

“Holy shit,” Kaidan exclaimed.

Even though it was clearly too late, John quickly pulled the shirt back down in place, mortified. Kaidan was staring at him, eyes wide, and the door to the changing room slightly ajar behind him. Then he shook out of his stupor, quickly glanced over his shoulder and stepped inside.

When Kaidan’s hand reached behind him and locked the door, John felt so incredibly stupid. He hadn’t realized these doors were lockable.

“Pardon the language,” Kaidan added, a little late. “Those aren’t from crashing with your bike, are they?”

The two stood at a stalemate, Kaidan waiting as John tried to decide how much he could avoid the truth, or even if there was any benefit to giving the other boy at least fragments of it. Too much time passed in silence and Kaidan approached him, one slow step at the time as though he were a scared animal. John tried so hard to not think of Toombs trying to appease him before John killed him. To break the similarities between the two situations, John forced himself to sit down. Kaidan soon took a seat beside him.

“Can I see?” Kaidan asked. His words were barely a whisper and when John nodded his fingers were just as gentle. They found an old and paled scar in the mottle of purple, one that John hadn’t bothered to cover before as it wasn’t all that noticeable at a quick glance. Whatever Kaidan had to be thinking, it made his voice sound sad and scared.

“I don’t know much about martial arts, but… this seems a bit much.”

John thought long and hard about what to say. His head was spinning with options, weighing the longing for a confidant against the risk of exposing Cerberus to an indoctrinated agent. They could be manipulative, for sure, bending you to their will with sweet words or emotional displays, but never in his training could he recall hearing that indoctrinated agents would be so light in the touch. Kaidan’s fingertips kept moving against his damaged skin, light like feathers and it would’ve tickled if his torso wasn’t slightly numb from the constant, thumping ache. His training had said that indoctrinated agents would make you want to talk to them, but nowhere had it said that it would feel simultaneously terrifying. When he glanced over at Kaidan, and their eyes briefly met, the picture just didn’t match. He realized with everything that had come to light lately, he was more inclined to trust this boy than he was to trust Cerberus. It was a terrible thought, but it landed him somewhere halfway.

“I don’t take martial arts classes,” he confessed. “Not anymore. It’s just a thing we tell people, because it makes things easier.”

He hadn’t taken any martial arts classes since the camps in Ukraine.

Kaidan was silent beside him, and John began to worry that he’d said something wrong, that perhaps he shouldn’t have offered any truths after all, but then Kaidan’s hand clasped gently around his wrist.

“If someone’s hurting you we should call the police.”

John panicked.

“You can’t tell anyone,” he pleaded, twisting out of Kaidan’s grip and started to pull the shorts back on. Cold be damned, he had to get out of there before something irreversible happened. If this brought attention to Cerberus, they’d move again, and John would never again be allowed this kind of freedom. Hell, he couldn’t say for sure they wouldn’t just lock him up in the crossroads and let the purge have him. Screw keeping silent about the book - this was far worse a crime, outing the whole operation. They’d label him indoctrinated, and what defence did he have to prove he wasn’t?

Kaidan’s hand was back on his arm, gentle and grounding. John realized he’d put the shorts on inside out and in his hurry jammed the tongue of his left sneaker all the way down to the toe. His breaths were coming in and out a little too fast, so he focused on that, on slowing them down.

“I’ll keep it a secret if that’s what you want,” Kaidan offered, voice as steady as his hand. John relaxed somewhat, his shoulder sloping in relief, the worst case scenarios slithering away like snakes in his mind, hiding in corners where he was still aware of them but didn’t need to devote them any attention.

“You can’t tell a soul,” John stressed, because he needed Kaidan to understand. The older boy nodded, letting go of his arm and giving him a little space again.

“I won’t,” he promised. “But… think about it. If someone’s hurting you-”

“No one’s hurting me,” John cut him off, because no one was. The reapers weren’t someones, they were monsters. He couldn’t explain it all for Kaidan, the little he’d shared was dangerous enough, but he needed him to understand at least this much. That this wasn’t some sad abuse story. It was just something unavoidable, for the greater good. “I can’t explain, just… trust me?”

Kaidan nodded with barely any hesitance at all, face serious and present in a way that no one had been around John, not that he could remember since mom died. In that moment, it truly sucked that he couldn’t trust Kaidan too, but he honestly couldn’t. There was too much at stake, and even if Kaidan was trustworthy, there was no way that father would ever allow him to take the risk.

* * *

 

1987

When John was six, he set foot in the crossroads for the very first time. Or rather, he landed on hands and knees in the dirt as they closed off the relay behind him. He knew in theory where he was, not because anyone had told him this was where they were taking him, but because it was supposedly the worst place to be and John couldn’t imagine anything worse than this moment. Only his mother’s car on that fateful day could compete, but the crossroads were so vast, so empty and he’d been dumped in there with nothing to defend himself with.

John could hear a whining, whimpering sound, realizing a couple of seconds later that the noise came out of his own mouth as he was hyperventilating. He needed to calm down, he knew from father’s teachings, as sound would attract reapers and reapers meant death when you were alone. It was easier said than done, and John tried anything, desperately smashing a rock against his left wrist, using the resulting pain as a focus point away from the fear. It worked to take the edge off, once bruises started forming, but then he needed something else to bring it down one level further. He kept switching it up until post-adrenaline fatigue hit him, making him drowsy and exhausted which was only marginally better than full out panic. Now John struggled to stay awake, shivering and feeling cold on top of it. He sunk down next to the closed relay, hugging himself while leaning against the flat surface that still maintained some miniscule heat from having been activated before.

The seconds ticked away, growing into minutes and deforming the fabrics of time until John couldn’t tell minute and eon apart. Not even the beats of his heart drummed out they usual, steady ba-dum ba-dum pattern. Every loop of life-sustaining mechanics was falling prey to the crossroads, hitching or breaking up, even if they never quite stopped. John couldn’t tell if this was his own fault for initially having panicked, or if it was just something in this dimension that messed with the human physique.

The light changed, dimmed, but there were no shadows growing longer, no sign of any sun setting behind the horizon. What instead came setting were great arms, like a kaleidoscope of the ground filling up the sky. Later would learn that this was the sign of the Crossroads closing, a phenomenon that happened at irregular intervals and made the crossroads infinitely more dangerous than usual. The closing arms cut the light, making the space look almost foggy and grey. John was staring out into the distance, at rocky shapes that grew more and more difficult to distinguish as the light seeped out of the place, as though someone had pulled the plug in a tub. At first he thought he’d imagined the movement in the canyons, started to hallucinate in his state of half sleep, but then it was there again and again, coming closer and closer with each time John saw it.

The panic returned, pushing John up on his feet, ready to run, but someone was faster. The relay activated and before John even had time to react there was a hand on his bicep, pulling him through with considerable force. On the other side, he fell at father’s feet. Eva’s hand let go of him, moving over to the relay’s console to shut it down.

Father hunkered into a crouch.

“You did good. You are a very special boy.”

John wanted to crawl into father’s lap to seek comfort, but was too scared to move, afraid and confused about what had just happened.

Father moved for him, pulling him against his side by the back of his head in some sort of half embrace. John didn’t dare to return the gesture in full, instead clambering for grip in father’s dress pants, holding the fabric like a lifeline.

* * *

  
1997

Ever since the talk in the changing room, Kaidan had been… not different, but definitely more present. At first John had thought it was pity that brought the older boy around every day, asking him to come along to activities even though John always said no, and dragging him to his table at lunch. For the first couple of days this had made John snappy, lashing out every time Kaidan showed any form of kindness, but Kaidan hadn’t let himself be deterred. Ultimately John just took it for what it was - a friend reaching out. It was an alien concept to him, but once he accepted it he had to admit that it was nice to not be so alone for a change.

It quickly became clear that John was completely out of the loop of pretty much any and all trends. These topics usually came up at lunch, when they sat together with Kaidan’s click of friends. Initially they tried to give him shit for it, especially Ashley and this guy who called himself Joker who had a playfully rude but hearty jargong going with pretty much anyone, but Kaidan was a calm and confident shield, stepping in until one day John fired something snarky in return. Joker had simply put a hand on his chest.

“Oh, snap!” Ashley had uttered, sending Kaidan into a fit of laughter that warmed John even as he recalled it later. Slowly but surely, he felt like he was integrating. For a couple of weeks, it was almost like he was any other kid.

Only he wasn’t, so of course it had to all come crashing down. It happened when he’d forgotten his shoes back in his locker, and had to run back to get them. It made a rare window in his new norm, where Kaidan or any of his click was near constantly and John’s side and this person must’ve been waiting to catch him alone.

“I remember you,” a voice spoke behind him, feminine and enraged. “I wasn’t sure at first, but then I saw you with him, _the_ fucking _illusive man_ himself.”

Turning around, it was the girl with the shaved head, her body in clear battle stance and her right hand holding a box cutter. Her face didn’t ring any bells beyond the first day at Grissom High, but her stance spoke volumes. It was the type of stance they had taught at the training camps in Ukraine, and John got flashes of a much smaller girl without makeup and hair in a ponytail.

“Zero,” John spoke in a whisper. The girl still heard him and the embers in her eyes sparked into wildfires.

“I have a name,” she grit out through her teeth, the statement roaring through her chest as she leapt into action. She was fast like John remembered, but not as fast as he’d grown and her moves were thankfully predictable enough that he could evade the sharp blade. John parried a few attacks before she got him in the leg with a kick, disrupting his balance. He used the speed and weight of the fall to drag her down with him, focusing on locking her armed hand so she at least couldn’t cut him. Some more wrestling on the ground and he finally managed to wrangle the knife from her and stabbing it into the grass.

She jumped back to her feet and aimed a drop kick at him, coming down with another angry roar. John just about evaded it by rolling onto his stomach, leaving his back blind to her. Deciding that getting the box cutter out of the picture was the higher priority, he gave her enough time to charge for another kick as he used his fist to punch the knife the rest of the way into the grass, so far that even the handle was submerged in the dirt.

Off to the side somewhere someone screamed at them to stop. The girl’s next kick nicked John’s shoulder, but it lacked the force it ought to have had. While she seemed adamant to keep coming after John, the shout must’ve been enough to distract her. John tried to turn that to his advantage, hurrying to get back to his feet, but it only gave the girl time get close enough to snatch her hands out for his throat. Thanks to reflexes John managed to shoot his arms up fast enough to prevent her from getting a perfect grip around his larynx, but not fast enough to prevent her from choking him entirely. He was struggling to draw in air at all, and the panic was spiking despite training telling him to remain calm and calculated at all times. All he could think of coherently was that he didn’t want to die.

“I’m not going back,” the girl spit in his face, despite keeping him at arm's length where it would be difficult for him to trip her.

“Stop! What are you doing?!”

Kaidan was there out of nowhere, trying to get the girl’s attention, but she wouldn’t be talked down. If anything, her anger and force just doubled, shaking John as she tried to twist away from Kaidan. John’s vision was starting to get a bit splotchy, bits and pieces getting blurred from the oxygen deprivation. Kaidan must’ve seen something on his face that scared him, because he changed tactic, throwing himself bodily into the fight. Using all his weight and strength into loosening the girl’s grip, Kaidan even went as far as biting into her forearm.

John wobbled, near passing out, when the choke-hold finally let up. As he sank to the ground, gasping painfully for air again, he vaguely caught sight of Kaidan and the girl exchanging blows, all chaotic and uncoordinated. The trained Cerberus style of fighting was gone, leaving way for some desperate lashouts that reminded more of a wild animal than any soldier. It soon got broken up by an adult. Lying down in the grass, John took in the scene with exhausted detachment, noting he recognized the janitor overalls and a sense of surprise at the man’s strength. The janitor hefted the girl to the side by a grip around her arm as though she was but a rag, easily keeping her out of striking range of Kaidan who had backed down of his own volition.

Then Kaidan started defending John, explaining him out of the scenario, painting him as nothing but a victim to the girl’s vicious attack while putting himself in there as an active party picking the fight because the girl was crazy. If Kaidan found her crazy, what would he think about John if he knew the truth?

There was a bit of an audience gathering at the outskirts of the parking lot. They weren’t many, not even ten of them but they all had this posture that was too stiff to be natural but held steady to signal disinterest. It was like they didn’t want to acknowledge their interest as much as they were dead curious. The janitor outright told them to sod off, then declared he’d forget he ever saw any of this crap as it wasn’t his job to keep them in check.

When the janitor dragged the girl away, Kaidan remained steadfast where he stood, head held high and feet apart like some sort of guardian. Down on the grass, John pulled up the fabric of his t-shirt’s neckline in vain attempt to conceal the new bruises and did his utmost to seem unaffected, to not seem weak. Kaidan turned around and saw right through him.

“Let’s go to the nurse,” Kaidan suggested, to John’s dismay.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I’m not going to the nurse.”

They had a stare-down at that where Kaidan seemed to be searching his face for something, some unknown answer that John didn’t know if he could give him. There were a couple of angry red streaks across Kaidan’s cheek, tiny pearls of red at the very center of them, and his hair was a mess from the skirmish. As much as it ought to make him look wild, John thought it did little to unsettle the sense of stability and kindness that the older boy always radiated.

“Then we’re skipping class, and you talk,” Kaidan said, very quietly, once the silence stretched too long, too thin and fragile between them. “I don’t know what is going on, but that attack just now? That’s not normal, John. I’m scared for you.”

John wrecked his brain for something to say to that, but any form of response he managed to mentally formulate just seemed to fall terribly short. Bits of truth were dangling at the tip of his tongue, tantalizing, like a drifting naval mine upon open sea to a man lost and drowning in the vast and otherwise empty waters. He wanted to open up to Kaidan, but he just knew it would explode in his face and possibly hurt the other boy in the process. Watching Kaidan wipe blood from his scratched cheek, John realized it already had.

“I’m dangerous,” John tried to deter the other boy, pleading half-heartedly because he recognized it was the right and unselfish thing to do. Kaidan was too good for him though and would have none of it.

“I don’t care,” Kaidan declared. “You’re my friend.”

It wasn’t fair. No one had ever called John a friend before. He both wanted to say that he considered Kaidan a friend too, and that the word friend wasn’t enough to convey how much John cared. Instead he focused on what Kaidan was requesting of him, on trusting Kaidan’s friendship.

“I can’t tell you,” he said, because honestly he had no idea of where to start. If Kaidan was as clueless about reapers and the crossroads as father claimed civilians were, then John would have a lot of explaining to do. Only of course, he had a way of not having to tell, not with his own words. “But I can show you.”

\---

John couldn’t bring Kaidan home, so he had promised to bring the book to Kaidan instead. They’d skipped class together for a bit, hanging out behind a nearby shopping center, before splitting up with a promise to go over everything together the next day. John just had to sneak the book out and keep his new bruises hidden until then.

Once home, he hurried into his room, keeping the collar up so that Eva wouldn’t catch sight of his neck that was starting to look purple. If father was home, the man had to be cooped up in his office, because John caught no trace of him as he scurried through the house.

Once his door was closed behind him, John dropped his backpack against it, using his toes to wedge part of the fabric underneath the door, enough for it to cause some resistance if anyone would enter. That alone wouldn’t keep anyone out, but it could give him a couple of extra seconds if needed. He then dug into his drawer for a scissor to use to lock the door with. Even this wouldn’t keep anyone out, but it was about buying time.

There was a moment of silence, of hesitations, once all the precautions were taken and all that was left was the defining act. Doubt started filling John’s mind. Was this really wise? Of course it wasn’t, but was it worth it? John could easily recall the worried look in Kaidan’s eyes from earlier today, as well as the first time the other boy had seen him bruised from battle. They were images etched into his memory with great detail. There were also happier sights, laughter and playing together with Mako. John wanted all that so much it hurt, but being afraid he would never be able to have it. All that Kaidan would give him would be the face of worry. John had to explain.

Taking a deep breath, he went for the bed, hopping onto the mattress and lifting the head end. It wasn’t until he peeled the fitted sheet away that he noticed something was wrong. The blue thread was ripped, partially gone and the cover fabric was slightly gaping open. Panic rising, John ripped the gap open wider, glancing inside but finding nothing. Getting off the bed, he flipped the mattress entirely, sending duvet and pillows flying in the process. He searched his hands all over, on both sides but once again nothing. The book was gone.

The first clear thought that came to John through the internal static of fear was - _I’m dead_. The natural conclusion was that father or possibly Eva had found the book, and there was no way they would think anything else than this meaning he was a traitor. Which was terribly ironic because today was the first day since finding the book that he had actually contemplated betraying their trust. He could explain that, but it would be pointless. They’d just believe him to be indoctrinated and order him killed for the greater good.

John didn’t want to die.

He allowed himself a couple of nerve-wrecking minutes to shove some extra clothes into his backpack, before he escaped out the window. Once he’d safely made it out of the neighbourhood unseen, he went to the only place he really had to go.

The trip took John nearly an hour and a half on foot, despite half running most of the way. By the time he arrived at the Alenko’s doorstep, the sun had already started to dip beneath the horizon, yet strangely there wasn’t a light on in the entire house. John was beginning to freak out, ringing the bell over and over again to no avail.

“If you are looking for Kaidan, he’s not home,” a voice suddenly spoke from some distance to John’s left. Stepping back a little from the door, he spotted an older lady looking at him from the neighbouring lawn, holding an excited Mako on a leash. The dog looked like it wanted to run over, but was too well trained to start pulling. Instead she half-sat on her heels, looking ready to bounce over the very second she got any indication she was allowed. Only the old lady ignored the dog, entirely focused on John.

“They all went back to school, to talk to the principle,” the lady explained. “That boy came home all scratched up, been in some fight! Mrs Alenko was furious, I tell you. She did not raise him to be some delinquent.”

Kaidan’s mom was angry and it was John’s fault. The lady continued talking, trying to fish for gossip about what rowdy things Kaidan could’ve gotten himself into, but John wasn’t listening, sinking deeper and deeper into guilt. He couldn’t ask Kaidan for any more help, not now and not like this. John had never met Kaidan’s parent, but he didn’t want them to think ill of him or to perceive him as bad influence over Kaidan. It was bad enough that father and Eva would never approve of their friendship.

John walked away without a word, refusing to turn around when Mako started whining at his departure.

* * *

 

1997

While being a teacher was a safe and relaxed gig compared to being deployed in Rwanda, it still managed to leave David exhausted at the end of the occasional day. Deciding to unwind with Kahlee afterwards had seemed like a no-brainer at the time, but perhaps he shouldn’t have stayed around as long as he had. To prevent falling asleep behind the wheel, he cranked up the radio in the car, hoping the tunes would keep him alert. C _andle in the wind_ started playing as he came close to the last gas station before the exit to his suburb. With a sigh, he realized it would be a gamble to wait until morning with filling up the tank, and signaled right.

The station was lit up like a beacon in the dark evening, but there was little activity beneath the lights. There was one customer driving off as David started filling his tank, and the scrawny guy behind the counter had his head in some book, holding a pen above a notebook at the side. Probably a student pulling a few late shifts to cover tuition. When going in to pay, David caught sight of some advanced sort of code that could’ve been advanced math, but could just as well have been chemistry. David couldn’t quite tell since it had been decades since he had any of either subject. There was a reason he’d re-educated to gym teacher and nothing else when he left the military.

“Quiet night,” David commented, when the guy was waiting for the receipt to print. There was a huff of a laugh in response. The poor sod looked even more exhausted than David felt.

“Yeah, save for some kid who tried to hole up in the mens room,” he said, shaking his head. “I did some stupid things as a teenager, but that is just disgusting. Makes you wonder about the parents, doesn’t it?”

The guy handed over the receipt, but David paused, trying to decide what to do.

“Where’s this kid now?” he asked, taking the slip of paper and sliding it into his wallet. He got a wave in direction down the main road in reply.

“He left only like five minutes before you rolled in, so he can’t be far.”

David decided to give it a go, drive down the main road for maybe ten minutes or so, just so that he could put the thought to rest once he got home. 

“Thanks,” he offered the man at the register and set out, expecting to find himself wasting time. To his surprise, he did find a kid hiking in the ditch, just a couple of kilometers past the exit he was supposed to have taken. There was some angry honking flying past him as he slowed at the narrow road side, but the kid seemed to ignore him at first, back hunched and hood up, slowly trekking on as though his backpack was filled with rocks. David let the car roll along for a few meters before pulling a full stop, and rolling the window down.

“Hey,” he called, and the kid jumped, stumbling upon a tuft of grass. When the kid finally turned around to face him, David was just as shocked.

“John, is that you?”

David turned on the light in the car, and enough of it spilled out onto the kid’s face to confirm that it was indeed John Harper from his grade 11 gym class. Despite the warm light of the interior car lamp, the boy looked white as a sheet, eyes blown wide and terrified. David was seriously worried he was going to bolt any second and took extra care to make no fast or surprising movements.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, as gently as he could, as if talking to a frightened animal. With the kid walking in the ditch, it was an oddly fitting comparison. Looking him over, the kid was even wet to the ankles and shaking. While he wore a thick hoodie underneath his jacket, the jacket was only a thin tracksuit jacket and the boy’s jeans were ripped at the knee, letting in a lot of cold October air. With the sun already down, he was seriously under-dressed. He was also very quiet, not responding to David's questions.

“Why don’t I take you home?” David offered, which elicited a telling response. To not lose the kid, he quickly made an amend. “Or to my place. I live close by and I can make you some tea to warm you up. How about that?”

The boy didn’t bite immediately, but after some consideration he seemed to cave. He nearly lost his balance for a moment, attempting to climb up out of the ditch, but then his footing got more sure and he moved with unexpected ease. It was something that David recognized from class. Perhaps it was the martial arts training, but this kid had some incredible strength and muscle control in those skinny limbs. He stopped with a hand on the back door handle.

“Your place,” he said as if to clarify, and only jumped in once Anderson gave him an affirmative. The boy slid in with grace, then balled up the moment he’d strapped himself in, hiding his shaking hands in his armpits. David waited for the traffic to clear, then did a 180 back towards home.

David's home was a one story house that was comfortable enough, but could see some repairs. He could’ve called a handyman to fix at least some of them, but a man needed to have a hobby. John was trailing behind him into the living room, taking in the latest spot of work with avid attention, going over the tools left out as it to catalog them. This wet and cold kid might not have the spunk and energy of the John in class, but he definitely had the same sense of vigilance. His eyes didn’t relax for a moment. Anderson could understand this in class, where there were balls flying and other students running around and screaming. Here it just made him look spooked.

“Why don’t you sit down while I put on the kettle,” David suggested, not taking his eyes off the boy as he sat down at the end of the couch, closest spot possible to the door. He hadn’t even taken off his jacket. Still ready to bolt, David noted to himself and tore his eyes away, towards the kitchen. He was almost surprised that John was still there when he returned with two steaming mugs.

“Do you want milk or sugar in that?” David asked, setting the mug down.

“It’s okay,” John replied with a shake of his head, the tone small and polite.

“I’m sure it is, but do you _want_ milk or sugar?” David pushed, making sure that his voice appropriately communicated that the choice was open and no trouble. John struck him as the type of kid who would go out of his way to not be an inconvenience, which was the trickiest kind of kid to help, in David's experience. Having to guess what they wanted was difficult and risky. He didn’t want to mess this up, with how likely it was that John would just return to walking out into the middle of nowhere if left to his own devices. David didn’t want to have to call the cops to help if he didn’t have to.

John ultimately settled on some sugar for his tea. Once they were all set, David took a seat in the armchair opposite of the couch. Close enough to have a talk, but far away enough to give the boy some space. John still squirmed in his seat, pulling at his clothes so he disappeared even more into them.

They sat silent for a while, landing in the moment, before David decided it was time to start to probe.

“The roadside is not a place for a minor. Especially at this hour,” he started, leaning down a bit to be able to read John’s face. The boy was tightly wrapped into himself, curled almost into a ball save for the feet that were firmly planted on the floor. His chin probably touched his chest, but it was hard to tell with the bulky scarf he’d stuffed into his hoodie.

“Why aren’t you home, with your family?”

John remained quiet. David kept trying, different questions, sticking to yes or no-options to at least get the occasional nod or shake of the head. John evaded most of the questions, keeping his lips sealed and eyes averted. David thought back on Kaidan who’s evasion tactic had been the complete opposite, talking excessively to take control of the conversation. John just didn’t engage at all. That was until David managed to land the right question.

“Don’t you think your parents are worried about you?” he asked and at first it seemed to elicit the same sort of absence of response as the rest. Then the boy took a deep shuddering breath.

“I did something bad,” John mumbled into his scarf. His cup was empty by now, and David was sure the boy had to be sweating by now underneath all the layers. While inadequate for the current weather, they were definitely too much for indoors, but David could understand they made some sort of shield in the boy’s vulnerable state. He was as low as he’d seen any of his students.

“Something bad?” David prompted when John didn’t elaborate.

“I didn’t mean to, but I didn’t say anything and now they found out and…”

John’s voice trailed off, breaking up and disappearing like a bad radio signal, only without the static. Instead of the audible blur, the words drowned in the boy’s posture. David struggled to hear what he was saying at all.

“And what did they say?”

Again, John took his time to answer. David waited patiently, trusting that an answer of sort would come this time, eventually.

“I didn’t stick around long enough to find out,” John ultimately admitted. David smiled at this, thinking of fights he’d had with his own parents. They had been loving, but strict towards him and because of that strictness, the first time he acted out he’d been absolutely terrified of the consequences. He wouldn’t say that his mother had let it slide just because he manned up and apologized - she’d made sure he learnt from his mistake, but in retrospect he’d massively blown his fear out of proportions. That was what teenagers did, he told himself.

“Maybe that is step number one then? Talk to them,” he suggested. John’s reaction was instant, eyes looking up and right at him for the first time since they stepped inside. There was something about the reaction that struck David as odd, but he couldn’t pinpoint what.

“They won’t listen,” John replied, sinking impossibly deeper into the couch. David spent the next few minutes trying to needle out of the boy why he was so convinced that was the case, but he was straight back into evasion tactics, so Anderson switched angle.

“Surely your parents must care for you,” he said to John’s still and tense figure. The brief eye contact was entirely gone now, so it was hard to get a read on any reactions so David just continued with what he thought was the right thing to say. “There must be moments that you can recall that you spent together that were good. Memories that you share that are more important than the rest. Can you think of any such moment, that was good?”

John was fiddling with the zipper of his jacket. If this was a good or bad sign, David couldn’t tell, but it was new.

“Mom’s dead,” John said, matter of fact, as though he had accepted it long ago. David vaguely remembered noticing that the person listed as his mother did not share is family name. Stepmother then. “But father buys me model kits when I miss her.”

“See,” David said, jumping on that little detail like a lifeline. “Think of your father in those moments. Don’t you think that father that notices when you miss mom could find it in him to forgive you?”

The moment was broken by the shrill ring of the phone in the hall, echoed by the softer ringtone from the one in the bedroom.

“Hold that thought.”

David went into the hall, positioning himself where he could keep an eye still on the boy in the couch. He was fidgeting, then dragging his backpack into his lap.

“Anderson.”

“Hello, it’s Kahlee. I’m so sorry for calling so late! Were you in bed already?”

They exchanged the minimum pleasantries before Kahlee got to the point, asking about the planner she’d forgotten in his car. Meanwhile David kept observing John who’d found some object in his back that he was staring at, transfixed. Unfortunately he hadn’t taken it out, the object whatever it was well hidden behind the canvas.

“No worries, I’ll bring it tomorrow,” David vowed and they ended the call. John must’ve listened in, because at the farewells he quickly zipped up the back and sat straighter in his seat. When David returned to the living room, something about him had changed.

“Can you take me home?” he asked.

\---

 

Rolling down the street where they now lived, John started doubting his decision. The guilt was eating an ever deepening pit of anxiety, but father was still his father and thinking of how much it had hurt to lose mom, John thought that maybe he was ready to take any punishment over losing dad too. If he grovelled, begged and pleaded, then maybe father would see it was really him. Indoctrinated agents manipulated and deceived right? They didn’t beg. He hoped with every fibre of his being that father would believe him.

“54, did you say?” Anderson asked to confirm, slowing down as they passed house number fifty. John only nodded affirmative, pointing towards his home where there were men standing at the lawn, despite the hour being so late. Coming up close, John saw father amongst them. The other two were vaguely familiar, men of the local cell that glared at the car, but then departed once father signaled for them to leave. The man’s eyes were locked with John’s, all the way until Anderson put the car into park and stepped out. The moment then broke, father rounding the car to greet his teacher and John allowed himself a few seconds to gather himself.

The click of the door was loud, the hinges heavy and groaning as he pushed it open. Father’s tone sounded grateful as he spoke in muted words with Anderson, but John was still terrified, still expecting the worse. What had he been thinking, asking to go here? Father’s temper always sparked the worst away from outside eyes. It was too late to step back though, the consequences of his choice already heavy on his shoulders.

John closed the car behind him, feeling like his last escape route was forever shut. Looking up at the house, he glanced Eva in the window, peeking out behind the curtains with a lit cigarette that briefly illuminated her face as she took a drag, then disappeared entirely. Not once did she come out to greet Anderson, or even show her face in the window again.

Father on the other hand used an excess of lavish words to express his gratitude towards the other man for bringing his son home. A voice at the back of John’s head said it was too much, over the top from someone like father, but Anderson looked so relaxed that John allowed himself to dare believe that things wouldn't be too bad.

Some quarter of an hour later, that belief again wavered as Anderson returned to the driver's seat in his car. Their eyes met briefly, and Anderson gave him an encouraging smile. John had no idea what kind of face he was making, but father put a hand on his shoulder and began ushering him inside.

“Please forgive me,” John whispered as they crossed over the threshold, the door clicking shut with an echo of doom. Father didn’t instantly switch to anger like John half expected him to though. His voice remained unusually pleasant as he continued to push him forwards, towards John’s room.

Eva finally made her approach, stopping them in the hall.

“Is that your teacher?” she asked, tone as flat as it ever got with her. Father paused, holding John in place by a grip on his shoulders. John nodded, not daring to initiate another lie.

“Mr Anderson,” John confirmed. “He’s my gym teacher.”

“I see,” was all Eva offered, before John was finally led to his room. There he motioned for John to sit on the bed, while taking the desk chair himself. They had a talk, a long one, but afterwards John couldn’t really say what had been the purpose of it. Father had asked about school, about friends and teachers. For some reason he hadn’t asked even once about the book, or even why John had tried to run away. When satisfied with all of John’s answers, father hadn’t given comment on them.

“You need to redeem yourself,” father had said instead. “Do you want redemption?”

Not daring to question father’s generous forgiveness, John had blindly accepted. How this redemption was to come about, John hadn’t been informed, but he’d been instructed to get some rest and be ready to depart in a couple of hours. Then father had left his room and locked him in.

It was only when alone and falling back on his bed that John noticed the bulge in the corner of the bed. In shock, he hopped up and inspected the mattress. The book was there, almost as if never gone, only the stitching was wider than John's. Too baffled to consider the risk, John ripped the cover open, pulling the book out to confirm it was still the same book. It was, the same cover and the same content, but flipping through pages he found one change. There were pages missing, ripped out. Going over the content a few times, he could no longer find the pages on the Lawson girls.

Returning the book to the mattress, he tried to figure out the implications, but the exhaustion of the day caught up with him before he could reach a conclusion. Before he knew it, father was there to collect him for his redemption mission.

 

\---  


Father was with him all the way to the relay, a comforting presence at his side, yet something about the whole thing rubbed John the wrong way. It was as if everything was just slightly off kilter, as though if he just relaxed, his brain would compensate and straighten it all out, but being aware he actively fought it. He just couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was.

Father helped him get into gear as Kai and one of soldiers present lit up the relay. With a quick glance John could confirm that all the soldiers aside from Kai were locals. For some reason Miranda was also there, still and silent as a statue observing them as they prepared. Checking his weapons out of habit, John noticed one of the handguns felt off. It was a small detail, really, because it was the same model of gun, but John had engraved his initials on his. On this gun that spot was clean and even beneath the pad of his thumb.

John tried to bring it up, but father instantly shushed him.

“No time,” he was told.

They stepped through into the crossroads, the weight of the alternate space wrapping around him, settling like a weight in his stomach. Once Kai and only two of the soldiers had stepped through, the relay closed down again. John had about half a second to catch father’s eyes staring intently back at him, unreadable, but filled with something hard, before the relay went blank and dormant.

“We’ll rendezvous with another group a bit further out,” Kai explained their low numbers, before John had the chance to ask. Multiple details kept lining up wrong and now the answers that were at the ready before even asked for. John was increasingly more and more on edge.

The path they took led them into territory unknown to John, and so he spent a lot of his attention committing their route to memory. So busy with that task, it took him way too long to realize there was no rendezvous. He only reacted when they wandered into a larger, open space, lined with debris from battle. No, not battle. This place looked like a junkyard, a reaper junkyard.

The others had stopped, and when John turned to look at them, the two soldiers of the local cell were aiming their guns at him. Kai did nothing to intervene, instead approaching a panel that was hidden between the piles of reaper waste. Something activated behind John, a trap door, and glancing over he saw tips of dragon’s teeth standing in the uncovered shaft. That was rare reaper tech. Why was Kai in possession of reaper tech?

Looking back at the men, John saw that the two unfamiliar to him was approaching him, all under Kai’s diligent watch, and Kai let them. John had a million questions. All of them drowned in the flood of fear and his instincts to survive kicked in. His odds were shot, with two drawn guns on him and his own firearm still in its holster. Even so, with the dragon’s teeth waiting just mere feet behind him he had no choice but to chance it.

Three triggers got pulled, but only one elicited the pang of a shot fired. The others merely gave off empty clicks, shortly before one of them fell to the ground. There was half a second of pause from everyone, a moment where they all just tried to catch up on what had actually happened. The moment was broken when John fired a second shot, disarming the second Cerberus soldier.

Kai jumped behind the armor plate of a harvester before John managed to take him down, but not before John could read intense emotion on the man’s usually blank face. Kai was seething. As John ran for cover in the opposite direction, he heard Kai scream in a rage more intense than he had believed any man to possess.

“MIRANDA!!”

A waiting game followed, both out of sight of each other. John didn’t dare sitting still for long. Kai was incredible at stealth and would ultimately find him and go for the kill if he didn’t keep on the move. There was this incredible silence hanging over the place, making every accidental scrape of the foot seem loud, only it was hard to read any direction with the sounds bounding back and forth on pieces of junk. Then a sudden blaring alarm cut through the air, coming from the area of the relay. Kai had hit his panic button.

The moment for caution was over. John had to get out of there now before reinforcements arrived, if he was going to have any chance. Maybe if he could round them, sneak back through the relay behind their backs, then maybe… it was a fool’s chance, but it was all the chance he got.

Problem was, John didn’t know this section of the crossroads at all, giving Kai and the local Cerberus cell a huge advantage. Kai also knew John, and quickly showed why he’d climbed so high so fast in the Cerberus hierarchy. As soon as John started moving back towards the relay, the man appeared like a shadow at his back, blade drawn and charging from on top one of the ridges. John only noticed him in time, thanks to the jump sending gravel down the rock wall.

John spun around, and fired a succession of bullets straight at Kai before falling into a side roll. The gun only fired at the first depression of the trigger, giving hollow clicks for the rest. John discarded it mid-roll, drawing a knife from his boot-holster as he pushed up into a crouch.

It turned out he didn’t need the knife. The one bullet had hit Kai at the side of his forehead, sending him sprawling chin first into the dust. He’d fallen into a crumpled heap, blade still in hand, but stuck in the ground and in the small slide caused by his speed, his head had twisted to turn towards John. The glasses that Kai always wore had broken and naked eyes stared straight at John for the first time. There was a red glow in them, for just a second before it dulled into a black, dead void.  

John recalled the pages in the book, listing experiments with reaper tech, a search for ways to control it. There wasn’t time to ponder whether father had succeeded or not. A crowd of heavy boots were close enough to be heard, and John set off in as wide a circle around the troops as he dared without losing his direction. Some time during the skirmish, the alarm had cut so he really had nothing else to navigate by.

The cat and mouse-chase went uneventful for about fifteen minutes, when they seemed to catch on to John’s trail. The noise approached faster and faster, probably due to shortcuts that John had missed or willfully avoided to throw them off. He had a vague idea of where he was now and decided to throw his last efforts at stealth and outright just run for it. If he made it past the relay, maybe he could shut them out. That or he ran straight into more Cerberus soldiers and was screwed anyway, but he couldn’t think of any better plan. So he ran.

Even though John’s gear was set for stealth, running hard and fast still made noise. His tail was instantly alerted of his changed tactic, and orders to match his speed were shouted across the group. John knew that in short sprints he was the fastest after Kai from his cell, but he knew too little to tell how he compared with the locals. He pushed himself as hard as he could, praying to whatever could possibly be out there that it’d be enough.

He made it into the valley housing the relay when a loud boom hit him from behind. The detonation was close enough for his ears to ring and the shockwave to slam him into the ground. On instinct he’d covered his head which was probably lucky with the heat that licked over him briefly before it abated somewhat. It was probably thanks to the shock of the sudden explosion that John didn’t instantly lash out when someone grabbed him and pulled him to his feet.

Miranda looked grim and determined, when their eyes met. She wasn’t in full gear, but she wore gloves and had a gun and a torchlight strapped to her waist. Behind her the relay was opened, but calm despite the chaos surrounding it. The explosion must’ve been both heard and seen from the other side, but the undisturbed surface meant that if anyone at all was there, they didn’t deem it necessary to come investigate. John had no idea what that could possible mean, especially not in the light of everything else that he still had to process.

“Come on,” Miranda said. “I only think that bought us about ten minutes or so, before they find another way here.”

She let go of John, and started walking away from the collapsed and singed ridges, now efficiently blocking the path.

“Kai was indoctrinated,” he said, hurrying to keep up. They needed to do something. What he didn’t know - flee, warn someone, save the world or just themselves. John felt he didn’t know anything anymore and was desperately seeking guidance. As they got closer to the relay, he saw that there was someone looking through at them. A small girl, and she looked a lot like Miranda. In fact, she looked exactly like her, just slightly younger.

A success in the cloning project, John realized with a start. Another detail connected not a moment later. The missing pages on the Lawson girls.

“It was you who took the book,” he said, pausing briefly, waiting for Miranda to respond. He didn’t expect her to turn the gun on him. Up close, he noticed it was _his_ gun, his initials barely visible at the edge of her grip. Her hand was steady, much steadier than John’s hand had been when he’d aimed that same gun at Toombs, all those months ago.

“If you read the book, then maybe you understand why I have to do this,” she said, voice solemn. Keeping her aim and her gaze steady, she crouched and reached an arm into the relay, picking something up that lay just inside. When her arm was back in the crossroads, she had a battering ram in her hand that she tossed at John’s feet. “I need to protect Ori. She’s the only one left.”

When Miranda ordered him to pick up the ram, it started to dawn on John just what she expected him to do. He remembered Kai using the ram at their last compound, remembered that he’d had to trek alone through the crossroads and exit through another relay. Maybe Kai managed that because he’d been indoctrinated this entire time, but John had gotten hurt doing that trek before, even with a squad covering his back.

As Miranda backed towards the relay, John tried to follow.

“Stay where you are,” Miranda quickly ordered, raising the gun just a little higher, as if to remind him it was still there. “The only way you can prevent me from shooting you is to swing that ram against the relay until it breaks. I’m sorry it has to be this way. That it had to be you, but this is Ori’s last chance. I won’t waste it for a stranger.”

Miranda didn’t take her eyes off him for even a fraction of a second as she backed her way out of the crossroads and back into the Cerberus compound. Once she was through, the ripple in the surface distorted their view of one another and John tried using it to his advantage. Whether Miranda had actually seen him move, or she’d simply anticipated his move, John couldn’t tell, but the first bullet graced the boot of his right foot, barely missing harming him. It was close enough that he didn’t want to risk provoking Miranda into firing a second time.

The ripple cleared again, and Miranda’s eyes were there, right at him, not even needing to search for him. Next to her John could see the younger girl pulling at Miranda’s steady arm, pleading. The little sound that carried through wasn’t clear enough for John to pick out any words, but the tone was desperate and miserable. Miranda did not yield.

“If you don’t do what I say, I’ll shoot him and step in there myself. You want that?” Miranda shouted, loud enough that John could hear, even if it sounded like it came through a wall. When the girl still hesitated, Miranda shot again. This bullet did not grace leather - it tore into skin.

John momentarily doubled over as the pain and shock hit him, nearly dropping the battering ram. Only the crazed look on Miranda’s face made him hold on. There was something unpredictable there, and it scared him. He was convinced that Miranda true to her words would shoot him if she deemed it necessary, or found him redundant. Not because she was cruel, but because she was desperate. John resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t getting out through this relay. With a groan he straightened and examined the wound. It was a gash in the side. Not deep enough to be immediately dangerous, but enough to bleed through his gear. An inch to the side and it would’ve punctured a lung. It hurt something fierce, but it didn’t incapacitate him. A small mercy, and probably the last if this kept going.

John readied the ram. Tears had started streaking down his face at some point, the sick sense of betrayal spilling over, and having no other outlet. At the other side, Ori looked white as a sheet, but had a firm grip on the battering ram, finally. John nodded in acknowledgement, needing the girl to obey Miranda to not suffer a third and lethal bullet. Miranda raised her torchlight up along with the handgun, marking a spot in the relay that aligned with John’s abdomen.

Ori stepped up the relay, finally, a litany of sorries falling from her lips as she readied herself. John said nothing, feeling sorry too, but too hurt to hand out forgiveness even if Ori was a victim of sort in this too. She wasn’t the one who’d be stuck in the crossroads with a squad of people that wanted her dead.

They charged and hit the relay once. Getting it right was harder than it looked and first attempt they didn’t align perfectly, the rams meeting just inside the relay instead of exactly at the surface. Ori stumbled back and Miranda shouted angrily. For half a second John was convinced that this was it, he’d get shot now, but Ori was quickly back and second try they manage to cause a crack. Third time proved to be the charm, the relay smashing to pieces like the rear view mirror on mother’s Volvo 240.

In the wake of it all, there was an incredibly sense of solitude falling over John. While he’d felt lonely almost his entire life, the only moment he could think of that even compared were the minutes drawn into something that felt like eons between mother’s car hitting the crash barrier and the rescuers pulling him out. While there was commotion in the crossroads, with the relay dead, John felt as though he was all alone in the entire world.

He turned and ran, ran faster than ever before. Trekking the distance to the depowered relay had been exhausting the first time around. With the far greater stakes, John felt as though the air was ripped out of his lungs with every breath. He could hear his tail following, the clamor of boots fading in and out of the soundscape, present just frequently enough to remind him of the urgency. If he stopped, he died.

Two hours in, his energy was waning and fast, his feet dragging rather than sprinting through the canyons. He’d almost fallen into a meditative state, his feet moving on their own while his mind kept slipping away, leaving gaps in his perception. It took him awhile to catch the sounds of a new enemy approaching. The despair hit like a sledgehammer when he heard the screech a second time, identifying beyond doubt that there was a banshee in the vicinity. He almost caved to exhaustion there and then, feeling hope slipping through his fingers like sand. He wanted to live, so badly and so he clinged to the last few grains, just enough hope to keep him moving.

By some miracle he avoided the banshee threat. Considering the sound of battle behind him, it was likely his Cerberus tail did not. John allowed himself to stop then, just a few seconds which was dangerous enough with how tempting it was to just lie down and rest. He listened to the screams, and tried to feel something. Those had been his comrades in arms, his family of sort since he was five. Then he thought of Kai’s red eyes just before they dimmed, and of father ordering him to his death. Maybe he’d always been this alone.

John started moving again, at a much more sedate pace. His face was wet with tears that kept gently streaming down his cheeks. It wasn’t the violent sort of cry that had wrecked through him when pleading to Miranda for his life. It was still, and almost soothing. It was like he’d held it all in, for so long, but now when there was no longer anyone around to see he could just let it all go.

He lost track of time, just dragging himself slowly forward one step at the time. The tears dried at some point, leaving crusty trails of salt behind them. John’s thoughts were about as slow as his trudge, contemplating spots he passed. Maybe he could lie down there? Or maybe there? He could just lie down and never move again. The only thing that kept him going was that he lacked the control over his body. As though his mind had disconnected, leaving his legs on autopilot, he just kept walking and walking. Right, left, right, left.

The ground trembled, a loud and mechanical groan filling the crossroads like a shockwave. Tipping his head back to look into the sky, John noticed the the crossroads were closing. Arms equally covered in grey, rocky, canyons were folding down on him. John stopped and stared.

His thoughts unbidden turned to Toombs, dying and handing him the book. The memory morphed into father handing him a box with a model kit. Mother reaching back for him from the driver's seat, calling him with her dying breath. Anderson asking him to come out of the ditch and into his car. Kaidan helping him sit up as Mako licked his face. Finally attending school, like a normal kid, with a normal life.

“I don’t want to die,” John said aloud, despite the lack of audience. Hearing the words himself though tapped into some hidden reserve of energy, previously blocked off.

“I don’t want to die,” he repeated with more resolve, and again and again. It became a mantra under his breath as he took off jogging again. The terrain was changing, the familiar tall spikes replacing the smoother ridges. Within a few paces, the circular shape of a dormant relay peaked above the terrain, and John neared a familiar stain in the dirt.

The goal being so close, John forgot to pay attention to the peripheries - a mistake that didn’t catch up with him until he was halfway through the clearing. He noticed a swarmer crossing his path not a second before a husk slammed into him from the side. By luck, the husk failed to get a grip on him, instead sending them both sprawling but apart. A spray of sand and rocks was flung into the air by the commotion, but by the time John got back on his feet, a hoard of ravagers and husks were visible through the billow of dust. They were kept spilling out between the canyons, numbers impossible to count, but they weren’t what had John worried. Behind them towered a harvester. By the sounds of it, there were even more unpleasant surprises lurking beyond sight.

Fighting wasn’t an option, not without firearms and not against these numbers. John had but one possible way out of this. Pulling his blades, he set straight for the relay again, only using force to knock enemies out of his way. With some dodging and diving around the husks, he managed to get close enough to pull the activating lever. Instantly he was forced to back again, drawing the reapers away from the slowly activating gateway, trying to disperse them into a more manageable tail. By spreading them out, he managed to take a couple down, but there’s wasn’t time to handle anymore. If he stopped moving, he’d quickly be overwhelmed. Not to mention the ravagers firing at him, their aim coming closer and closer with each moment he stalled. Checking the progress of the activating relay, he set out into one last wide circle that should bring him right through just as the gateway completed powering up. It started out well enough, until he staggered parrying a strike from a husk lashing out, causing him to wobble through the last few steps in his sprint. Behind him a terrible shriek like some metallic horn filled the air and John simply dropped the last curve in his escape, heading straight through the bright light that had started moving like a pool of water. For one fantastic second, it seemed like he would make it. The surface was just at his fingertips, the first sense of resistance just right against his hand.

Until an inch in it something hard. Instead of slipping through, John slammed straight into a hard surface. The moment after he was pinned, literally, to the relay. Looking down, he saw what looked like a giant reaper claw, piercing through his back and out his stomach. His systems were in shock so he couldn’t feel the pain. He did not need the pain however to understand that this was it.

 _So close_ , he thought. His hand against the relay sent ripples in the awakened surface, but there was nothing showing from what lay beyond on the other side. _So devastatingly close_.

 


	3. Two men in unique positions

1997

Expecting normalcy could be one hell of a blindfold. When stationed in Rwanda, not a fly could’ve passed under David's radar, while in his own home an elephant could have run through the room without him reacting. The metaphorical elephant on this occasion didn’t catch up with him until hours too late. He’d dropped John off at his home, rationalizing every little warning bell to himself, then gone home and proceeded to oversleep. When he’d pushed his car just above the speed limit to make it to work in reasonable time, he had noted the pillar of smoke, but put it out of mind in favor of focusing on traffic. At the staff office with minutes to spare, he only vaguely registered the phones ringing at an unusual frequency and colleagues sitting huddled around the one radio in the room. Hadn’t Kahlee reeled him in, he probably wouldn’t have caught a single word of the news report.

“The warehouse that was listed under _Horizon International Logistics_ , supposedly had smoke detectors that did not trigger. Police officials say this can be a case of arson. It is still unclear whether or not anyone was caught in the blaze.”

“The Lawson family co-owns that company,” Kahlee said to David with sadness in her voice. "I have their girl in my math class."

While David understood the horror of the situation and how it would affect his partner, he did not at the time understand the full significance of the event. The elephant rampaged on unnoticed as he hurried past colleagues taking calls from kids reporting themselves to be sick, yet none of them having a parent around to hand over the phone to. Only when David made it to his own class, the teenagers lining up for attendance, did the elephant pierce through into his attention. As he reached John Harper on the list, he was met with silence.

“John Harper,” he repeated, searching the room for the boy’s face. He didn’t find John, but then he finally noticed that Kaidan Alenko was visibly agitated. Slowly David started connecting dots at that, as he was aware that the two boys spent time together both in and out of class. Finally he allowed himself to think anything but the best of John’s family, the warning bells turning to lead in his belly, painfully heavy and damning. There were too many gaps however to reach anything conclusive, and all he accomplished was a spinning mind that distracted him from running his class. The kids started goofing around, rules of basketball abandoned for a mutated form of tag, and Kaidan withdrew from the game entirely, slipping to a corner with Ashley sticking to him like a loyal shadow. When Anderson tried to get the active students back into some semblance of order, Kaidan bolted out of the room.

“Please take over and keep the score,” David instructed one of the more disciplined students, passing over the whistle and scoreboard. “I’ll be back in ten.”

David caught up with Kaidan in the hall outside the changing rooms where the boy was having a complete meltdown. David had only had him in his class for one of the two years he’d been in Grissom High’s employ, but through that year Kaidan had only ever been a solid, cheerful sort of kid. Whatever was going on now was far out of his norm.

It took some considerable coaxing, Kaidan was reluctant to speak for some reason, but in the end it distress won out.

“I shouldn’t have listened,” Kaidan started approaching whatever was troubling him, but then stopped when Ashley stumbled out into the hall, a couple of other students in tow. Acting on instinct, Anderson barked orders at them to all return to the class, much harsher than he normally would. Thankfully Ashley took it like a champ, herding the others quickly back from where they’d come. Once alone again, David walked with Kaidan to the staff changing room so they could continue undisturbed. Then it all spilled out.

As Kaidan described the bruises and scars, retelling the conversations with John to the best of his capacity, David wanted to assure him that all would be well, but he’d be lying if he claimed that the warning bells didn’t suddenly crescendo into blaring alarms. _They won’t listen_ , John had said and at the time it had sounded innocuous enough. Now David realized his massive mistake in not asking what John had expected them to do instead.

“Let me go end the class, and then we’ll go and call the police from the teacher’s lounge,” he told Kaidan, when the boy ran out of steam, falling quiet at the end of his fearful rant. For David , the moments that followed passed as if in a haze - a series of actions that just fell into place while his focus remained in the past, trying to undo mistakes that he knew were committed and already etched in time.

An officer Bailey came around to take statements from Kaidan. It took long enough that David was forced to return to teach another class, then two, and it wasn’t until the third that he was called for statements. Only it wasn’t Officer Bailey that came around. The duo that met him in the hall carried RCMP badges, and a firm request that David come with them. While David tried to figure out what he could’ve done to warrant his arrest, he also took notice of the replacement teacher that had been called in. The person was not one of the school’s regular staff, meaning the principle or someone in administration must’ve been notified considerably earlier than David himself about his expected departure.

“You’re not in trouble,” one of the officers assured as they lead him out of the gymnasium, but neither officer were forthcoming about why they were departing from the school. Where they were going showed itself soon enough, the police vehicle driving them towards the warehouse fire, then turning off the main road towards a vaguely familiar suburb. They ended up outside what David recognized as John’s home from the night before. While little had physically changed, the atmosphere was vastly different.

Like before, there were people milling around, but today most of them wore uniforms and no one stopped to gawk at the approaching car, instead keeping busy with various tasks.

David wasn’t truly shocked until they stepped inside the house.

Just to the left from the entrance was the kitchen, all marked up for evidence and crime scene photographs. David's attention however fell on the man occupying the space, dressed in a neat suit that just didn’t fit his character, despite looking tailored to his figure.

“Mr Santiago?” David asked, coming face to face with whom he until this moment had believed to be the Grissom High janitor. The scarred face twisted into a smug sort of smile, but the humor didn’t quite reach the eyes.

“Massani, actually,” the janitor clarified, pulling a badge out of an inner pocket in his jacket. As if the situation needed to get any more surreal, the badge was of FBI make.

“You’ve been an agent this entire time?” David asked, perhaps a bit dumb, but he was just too shocked to come up with any smarter commentary. The janitor - Agent Massani - pocketed his badge again and gestured to his face.

“I didn’t turn out like this cleaning toilets or fixing the lights,” he joked, sounding like their same old janitor, making David dislike the suit even more.

“We thought you were an ex-convict,” David admitted, for the first time questioning whether this was just some rumor inspired by Massani’s rough looks, or if this was something that Massani himself had encouraged people to believe about him.

“The best lies have some truth to them,” Massani said. “Never been to prison, but I do have a lifetime ban to enter China. But that’s neither here nor there. Walk with me.”

Massani led them away from the kitchen, through the crowded hall, and into a room towards the back of the house. It was as sparse as any other space in the house, but the desk was covered with little models and David realized instantly just whose room this was.

“Where is the boy?” David demanded, certain that Massani and all the officers on location must know at least something. Considering the full seize of the house, David instantly assumed the worst. That Massani seemed in no hurry to annul that fear seemed to just further seal the boy’s fate.

Massani instead presented him with a book in an evidence bag.

“Familiar with this?” the agent asked, handing the bag over. The cover was nondescript, but turning to check the spine, David found himself at least familiar with the author. He could not for the life of him see how the book was relevant.

“What does Grisham have to do with anything?” he asked, trying to reign in the surge of anger. Massani slapped a pair of rubber gloves at his chest in response.

“Put these on and have a look.”

David did as told, feeling cold dread as he flipped through the pages. About a third in, he stopped dead, coming across technical drawings of a very familiar shape. It depicted the same circular object he’d reported seeing in Rwanda, the one they’d told him he’d hallucinated and had him discharged over.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, words barely a whisper, the disbelief having punched the air out of him. _Relay_ the book called it. David flipped another page and found photos. It was real. Proof the bloody thing existed and that he wasn’t crazy. He didn’t know if he wanted to cry in relief or indignation at the sight. He ended up simply standing frozen, staring, until Massani plucked the book out of his hands to flip ahead a few pages. When David got the book back, there was a photo of John’s father. In the margin, someone had scribbled in pen - _the illusive man_.

“For the past five years I’ve been hunting down this organisation called Cerberus,” Massani explained. “And this man specifically. Illusive is a very apt description. Until recently I had no idea if he was even a real person, or just some fictional persona representing a collective. What Cerberus are truely after still eludes me in part, but their methods are unquestionably dangerous and would have been enough to put this illusive man away for life in any state or country.”

“Would have been?” David questioned, wondering what the catch was. Massani had looked serious this entire time, but now it turned impossibly grimmer.

“The warehouse fire,” he started, stepping away from David, glancing out the room’s only window. The view was limited to the neighbor's wall, plain and cast in shadows at this hour. “It was used as a cover-up, a cremation chamber for evidence if you will. While we don’t have an ID on all the bodies, five uncovered so far, we do have a witness statement that claims one of them to be Mr Harper. There are things not adding up, but I do believe that at least that much is true.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” David asked, a valid question considering all of this had to be highly confidential information. It would not be passed over to some civilian without motive, at the very least not when it was still part of an ongoing investigation.

“We are both men in very unique positions,” Massani explained himself. “As an employee of the FBI, I have responsibilities in regards of both national security and criminal investigation. RCMP and CSIS can’t legally share secretly obtained information with each other, but as a partner I can liaison between the two and therefor help create the full picture of Cerberus activity here in Canada.”

It vaguely made sense to David, the benefit of an FBI partner, and how this Cerberus organization could have managed to trigger both criminal and national security-investigations independently and simultaneously. It also brought David's attention back to his superiors reaction to his depiction of the disk (the _relay_ ) in Rwanda. They had shut him down, because they had already known what it was and gone for containment strategy, rather than explanations they might not even have had at the time.

“And how am I unique?” David asked. Something in Massani’s posture shifted, not shrinking, but softening, before he replied.

“I have information on the probable wearabouts of this kid from your class, and if I’m right and he’s still alive, then Canadian Armed Forces are the only ones able to retrieve him fast enough. To them and their current knowledge of the relays and whatever is on the other side, this boy is a gold mine of intel. What chances do you think he has to get a normal life, once they get their hands on him?”

David didn’t answer, interpreting the question as rhetorical as Massani had yet to explain how David himself came into all of this.

“You have a service record, technically halfway to clearance already, having seen a relay before, and most importantly - you also have a connection to the child. I can convince them to take you along on the rescue op, and you can do everything in your power to assure that this child finally gets to be free to live his own life.”

There was so much more going on than what was being said, but David understood that there were both time constraints and miles upon miles of red tape severely limiting Massani in what he could divulge. David only needed to understand one thing though, before deciding whether or not to throw himself into this, straight into the deep end.

“That still doesn’t explain why _you_ are telling me this,” he said, stressing the _you_ as it was Massani’s motivations he struggled to grasp. Not once before had he seen the man show any form of interest or care for John’s well being.

Massani didn’t answer straight away, letting the silence stretch a bit and David began wondering if he was going to get any form of answer at all. Before speaking, he turned around to face David again.

“Six years ago, while on an investigation in Ukraine, I had an opportunity similar to what you now have. It took me four years to create a second chance,” Massani said. Something in his eyes gentled, a stark contrast to the scars, and turned sad. “Four years is a long time for a child.”

Massani didn’t need to express his regret further than that. David could taste it dry and painful in his own throat as he nodded his consent.

“Ok,” he spoke, pitch strangely rough and raw with emotion. “I’ll do my best.”

\---

 

The image of death had always been a cracked rear view mirror, preceded by headlights blinding them and screeching tires. At age sixteen, death looked like a haze. For the longest time, John could not figure out where he was or why. At its worst, he couldn’t even tell up apart from down. His senses only picked up snippets of information here and there, no way near enough sensory input to orient himself by.

When death slipped away, pain took its place. John had never longed for death, but when the pain spiked he found himself wishing for it to end at whatever the cost. Someone touched him, potentially multiple someones. It was hard to tell when every brush cut like knives through his nerves. When all sensations faded into the fog of sleep, John embraced it. He drifted in and out, pain building and then getting swallowed by another bout of sleep, over and over until John lost count. With time, he got more and more aware though, catching voices exchanging strings of noise that just wouldn’t shape into anything coherent.

Sight took longer to recover, but when it did, John didn’t trust it, believing himself to be asleep still. The faces that peered down on him were just too strange to be anything but a fantasy. Only they remained, their moving lips aligning with the weird speaking and prodding at his body that slowly started responding in ways other than agony. He noted in a detached sort of way that at some point he’d started talking, saying things to these people, whoever they were and were doing to him.

“I want to go home,” he kept saying, and “I miss mom.”

The first clear memory John had from after his near death experience was of a lizard-looking creature angling a box-like object towards his mouth as he rambled out his please like a broken record. The box came away, making sound of its own, before the lizard spoke in turn, the language sounding like a bunch of rubbish noise, fast and higher in pitch than the average human. Then the box sounded again, but in English.

“You go home when you breathe without external lung,” the box spoke, the voice boxy and stiff in a way no human voice was, aside from the slightly weird grammar and wording. “Four organs dead when found. Still need one more replacement.”

John panicked a bit at that, for the first time looking down on his body. There were wires and tubes coming out of him, so many that he couldn’t even tell where his body was and wasn’t beneath the mess. Hyperventilating into an external lung apparently wasn’t a good idea and moments later he passed out.

The next time he came to, he managed a little longer, long enough to exchange some names and get some information on his whereabouts. Dr Mordin Solus, the lizard man who talked to him through the box, explained that he was in a part of the crossroads called the Citadel, a node between the arms, only accessible when they closed. There was no purge, Mordin insisted when John asked, only open roads that linked these distant corners of the universe. Each arm linked to a different planet, which some humans seemed to have known and resisted in the past. Mordin expressed a desire to change that.

It was a lot to take in, on top of everything else that was a mess in John’s life, but the surreality of it all was sort of soothing at the time. John could just imagine none of it was real, or that he’d woken up in an alternative universe where his only trouble was that he was strapped to a bed as his left lung was being regrown. He’d miss Kaidan something fierce though, if it turned out he indeed had skipped over into some other universe. He tried not to think too much of it, the machines monitoring him getting noisy every time as he agitated himself with all his fears and worries.

John was walking the fine line between wakefulness and sleep again when a great amount of ruckus occurred in the distance. Mordin seemed calm, continuing his ministrations as other aliens started moving around, grabbing what looked like firearms of some exotic make. There were shouts in the distance, in yet another language John didn’t understand and didn’t have a box like Mordin’s to translate. There was a crowd gathering at the far end of the large and open spaced medical compound, the large bulky aliens that more growled than talked whenever John heard them sort of acted like bouncers at the door, but ultimately let a squad of women-like aliens in various tones of blue, purple and green flood the hall. They were so many, moving with grace yet power that had John distracted enough that it took him ages to note they had a familiar face in tow.

There were four humans in total being escorted to his bedside, but once John recognized Anderson in the group, he just stopped paying attention to the rest of them. Anderson was wearing some bulky gear, something like what NASA astronauts wore in space, only a little slimmer and easier to move in. John could see his concerned face clearly through the glass bubble in his head, only temporarily obscured by reflections in the glass. One of the blue women, one dressed in red armour and red markings on her face, spoke to Anderson through a box similar to the one Mordin used. Shortly after, Anderson removed his helmet and kneeled at John’s side.

“What are you doing here?” John asked in awe and disbelief, before his teacher could find words himself to fit the moment. There were tears in the man’s eyes that John had not expected, like John mattered. John wasn’t quite sure what to do with all that raw emotion, so he focused on what Anderson said.

“It’s a long story but,” Anderson started, pausing briefly to take in all the machines that John was still hooked up to. “In short, I’m here to take you home.”

It was simultaneously the best and worst thing Anderson could ever say. John wanted to go home, he had said so himself, but what was home anymore?

“I can’t go home,” he said, feeling a strange sting in his eyes and a constriction in his throat. “Father tried to…”

His voice cracked before he could finish, and Anderson kneeled next to the bed, grabbed his hand and squeezed gently yet firm, as if to remind John he was still there even as the tears obscured him. John held on like it was his only anchor.

“That man wasn’t a father,” Anderson said. Later John would learn that father hadn’t even been his biological father, that in no capacity other than deceit had John ever been a Harper. Here in the Citadel hospital however, what was important to John was what Anderson said next.

“You never, ever have to see that man or anyone associated with him ever again. I’ll take you to a home where you are treasured and cared for like a child as you should be, if it is the last thing I do.”

Anderson kept this promise, and it was far from the last thing he ever did for John. There were small things, like introducing him to pop-culture classics like Star Trek and getting him a suit for graduation, and big things, like taking him in and five months later formally adopting him. John could never say that his life was quite normal, having too much baggage he needed to sort out, but ultimately life was good.

* * *

 

1998

The sun was setting on a particularly warm July evening. They were sitting in the car, windows rolled down to get the cooler air inside, as David couldn’t afford one of those cars with A/C. Kahlee had made herself comfortable in the passenger seat, back rest a bit reclined and her whole body angled towards the driver’s side. Having underestimated how long the movie the boys were watching was, they’d arrived early and passed time by gossiping about their students. Neither of them had touched the still raw subject of how David was returning to service instead of teaching in autumn. It was a trade-off he'd made, a guarantee to keep John out of the crossroads and out of any investigations of what this new world entailed, as long as the kid himself chose to. Part of David was happy to go back to the field of work he'd been unjustly cast out of, but he'd lie if he said he hadn't found himself liking this new, civil life. Thankfully it was only the job that changed, especially now that Kahlee and him had bought a house together, a little closer to the school. It was a comfort to know that whenever his service called for him to be away, John wouldn't be alone. 

“Here comes a crowd,” David interrupted himself mid-sentence, something about the new janitor that he instantly forgot about in his excitement. Kahlee’s attention quickly aligned with his. She sat straighter in her seat, eyes perusing the people exiting the cinema and scanning for the boys. It was all David's fault. While gossiping, he’d insisted there was something brewing between the two teens, and Kahlee apparently had a soft spot for puppy love and a curious streak, that well, they both shared, to be honest. David too was sitting at the edge of his seat, looking for the boys and for something to confirm his theory.

John had opened up to David about a lot of things, mostly hard topics, but every time David tried to ask about Kaidan the boy would fluster and bolt. Kaidan seemed a bit more collected, but Anderson had caught them both being jittery around each other on more than one occasion. It was ridiculous in the way that any teenager should get to experience, and David was relieved that John despite everything could have that. Of course, if the two could stop just dancing around each other already and get to it, that would be even better.

“There!” David exclaimed as he spotted a familiar head at the back of the crowd, walking slower than the rest. A few steps later, Kaidan came into view too, pressed close to John’s side. Kahlee squealed in her seat and hit David in the shoulder.

“They’re holding hands, aaw,” she squeaked out through a happy grin. Her bubbly laughter was infectious and David found himself caught in it too, a second wave hitting him as it struck him how silly they were acting. Who were the teenagers now? Kahlee had no shame though, bouncing in her seat with energy, while pointing out little details. Thankfully the boys were far away enough to not be able to see inside the car, so they could indulge in the moment a little longer, without mortifying John.

The boys stopped at the curb, a little out of the way of the people leaving, just next to the bus stop. John then had some initiative that David had not known him to possess, placing his hands on Kaidan’s chest who cupped John’s cheek in turn.

“Oh,” David reacted, eyes wide at the quick kiss exchanged, right there out in the open.

“Oh,” David repeated, and turned to Kahlee who had melted in her seat, hands over her heart and a goofy smile all across her face. They just stared at each other in some sort of happy wonder, and David got this piercing feeling in his gut that kept overwhelming him lately. He imagined it was what parents felt, when their kids did well. Then he noticed a playful spark in Kahlee’s eyes.

“No teasing him when he gets in the car,” he insisted, a toting finger up for emphasis. “Give him at least a month.”

Kahlee hooked her finger with David's, coming down somewhat from her glee, put the spark never quite fading.

“As if you will be able to hold back that long,” she said, shaking their hands in some sort of promise they’d both struggle to keep. They had a couple of minutes after that, to school their faces, sorting themselves out so it wouldn’t be too obvious they’d waited in the car for half an hour.

John approached the car with a restrained spring in his step, his face happy and flushed even though he tried to look cool and unaffected about it. His mouth was pulled into a straight, neutral line, but the rest of his face gave him away. As the boy slid into the backseat of the car, David only dared glance once at Kahlee to confirm that she too was struggling to not burst out in gleeful laughter at the poor kid. In the rear-view mirror, David spied John playing with one of the buckle hoops of his jeans overalls, the line of his lips momentarily betraying him, curving up into a private smile. David tried to distract himself from making remarks by starting up the car and heading out into traffic.

“So, was the movie good?” Kahlee asked, and words came out of David's mouth before he could help himself.

“Or were you too distracted making out to tell?”

Kahlee’s hand slapped hard against his shoulder before he could even finish the question. It took John two days to forgive him, and then the boy retaliated with an onslaught of sex ed-type questions with the worst timing he could manage, shrewdly pushing extra hard whenever he noticed David floundering for answers. David didn’t regret a thing.  
  


* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I might write some additional epilogue/appendix pieces, just to cover a little bit what happens with everyone after. I know a lot more about where everyone ends up than I managed to work into the story. I could've spread this story out over a much longer word count, but time constraints held me back a bit. I have no sequel planned at the moment, even if there are story-lines that I could potentially expand into something new. Maybe if enough people like it, I might feel inspired to write some more. I am staying away from writing teenagers for a while though, omg, it has been a challenge! Hope I pulled it off well enough that you all had a good time reading it!


End file.
